Gotta say I 100% disagree with your analysis of the story and characters. Reach has a lot of depth and a lot of people don't seem to be able to scratch more than the surface with it. The story is driven by a setting, the goal in the beginning is totally clear to anyone that plays it: defend Reach. Though the intro scene showing your spartans helmet shows you how this turns out, it gives the feeling that you already lost, that you're fighting an uphill battle. But the goal that brings more meaning to the story is the delivery of the package, because at that point you know Reach will fall and Halsey says it herself. And the monologue afterwards is probably from a time after the events of Halo 3, when the fight was finished, the war was won, and humanity returned to Reach. Your helmet stays where it is as a symbol of soldiers who died defending their home. No memorable dialogue you say? Little to no characterization? "You know this stuff is stolen..." "What? You gonna arrest me?" "No. Gonna steal it back" *Jun the sneaky sniper deals with sneaky thieves appropriately, and shows how smoothly he can handle situations "This sanctioned, sir?" "What do you think?" "Oh...." *Jorge is a little thick-skulled and is quite surprised when Carter, the by-the-books leader goes OFF the books to listen to Kat, the tech genius' plan. Countless other examples I could list but the main point is your analysis of the story, characters, and setting doesn't pay close attention to the details that make Halo: Reach's story so awesome. Though that is just my opinion, I don't think you gave credit where credit was due there.
I think that's understandable. Reach's structure and setup worked for a lot of people and were invested and feeling the struggle and desperation of fighting a losing war. I personally didn't echo those emotions because the story didn't provide enough contrast and no surprises, and the characters weren't developed enough. The dialogue you mention is by no means bad, but I honestly had to pause and struggle to remember where they were said. That, and the archetypes the dialogue reveals are pretty cliche. Military professionals smoothly dealing with criminals or reckless behavior is something we've seen in all forms of storytelling numerous time.s A missed opportunity I was going to bring up but scrapped due to already going into detail about the Covenant's introduction, was after Jorge blew up the Carrier and you land back on the Planet in the snow. I felt instead of a cutscene, it could've been gameplay where you're forced to walk completely alone in the dark snowy fields to the city, remembering who just scarified their life and foreshadowing the game's epilogue. But the game seems terrified of boring the player, so cutscenes always skip these possible moments. I'm really glad you brought up some of the dialogue and structure. I've seen too many people disagree because they believe story doesn't matter, or that they're Spartan's so they don't need characterization. These always felt like cop outs to me. Thank you for bringing up moments in Reach that I didn't elaborate on. Keep up the good work, Act Man!
The Act Man I agree with you all characters have their own story especially Kat here story barely getting ton know her then name she's gone just like that.
Act mans videos that are just talking about the campaign and the campaign alone have next to nothing for dislikes. This video which is making a poor attempt to cover the whole game is about 30% dislikes and 70% likes. Clearly you sucked it up in this video. You should have given credit where it's due and spent less time hating on just about everything. You compliment the music, parts of btb, and parts of invasion. Everything else you pretty much hated on. A lot of your hate is easy to disagree with and in some cases just plain stupid. I give this video a 3 out of 5. Your other halo videos are better. This one was pretty weak though.
Same so many good memories but too bad the halo now for whatever reason for me is not halo for me anymore I quit playing console game, and now I join the PC master race
Spartans are soldiers, no ifs, whats or buts about it. They do NOT just do what they want. They all follow the chain of command. Clearly you have no knowledge of how Military command structure works.
And even then there are some nice surprises along the way. Your sacrifice means Jun lives, Halsey lives, Cortana lives, Keys lives, MC lives, tons of innocent humans live, and the alien assholes get their teeth knocked in. It's about going down fighting and having it mean something in the long run. What's not to be admired and moved emotionally about that? Even if you think that noble teams efforts were pointless... You still have to admire that they put up one hell of a fight and never gave up.
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 "What's not to be admired and moved emotionally about that?" Real hard for me to get infested and moved when it's a _prequel_ and there's no tension because we know what's going to happen. Of course Keys, MC and others live, they need to for the rest of the franchise to happen. It's the classic prequel problem that effects prequels in all media. None of these actions have weight because we know that no matter what happens in the story, things will eventually go as they do in future installments.
The Looinrims The point was to protect and help evacuate civilians, and to get valuable assets off reach.That is literally the point of the game. All you halo 3 fan boys think everything needs to be a decisive master chief fucking victory in reality you have losses and consequences.
aaron ponton no, not 'all halo 3 fanboys blah blah blah' it's just we see a good campaign with a good set of missions that interconnect, and then we see reach which feels like they accidentally deleted all the cutscenes and stuff with all that worthless story content like character development, theme, emotion, etc
aaron ponton I think the point was that you are still a spartan in reach. The other Halo games have you play the chief and have these insane victories, and it makes sense. In Reach, the gameplay still has you feeling like a tank while you are in a hopeless situation. It's a dissonance that can't be fixed and makes the tone of the game fall flat(for me at least).
Reach was my favorite, I have had so many good memories in it with friends I just can't hate it. I still play it to this day and will continue playing it until the servers shut down.
A lot like Lasky's line in Halo 4 how he became captain, for me Halo Reach's most memorable line was on Nightfall, the local militia had 3 big cases marked UNSC. Jun says "So you took these weapons from the local base?" Militia Man "What you gonna arrest us?" Jun "No, we're gonna steal it back." *Mic Drop*
This game isn't about being badass it's realizing that humanity is up against an enemy that they stand no chance in beating. Evacuating civilians and getting Intel of the covenant was the ONLY objective on reach. The point of the campaign is to show you how futile your efforts are in the grand scale of this one sided war. You aren't meant to win in this game... Period
Except, it doesn't really sell any of those points. It's really hard to care about anything thats going on when none of it has any character (or barely any). The player isn't given much reason to give a shit about reach or most of noble team. It's real basic storytelling, which the campaign seriously lacks. You need character, pacing, and a compelling setting. If none of those things are fleshed out, then it becomes really hard to care about what's going on. That's the campaign's biggest fault, which was explained in the video.
Yeah idk reach is still my favorite campaign, I think you're underplaying a lot of its strengths like cinematography and gameplay, and yeah the characters aren't thoroughly fleshed out but I just don't think it's suppose to be a character driven story, it's more about reach then it is about noble team
definitely the best campaign of halo. I've never been so emotionally tied to characters that i have so little interactions mechanically with. my heart broke when Kat died :'(
Well said. The halo lore and story has always been pretty flawed compared to many sci fi stories out there so I don't give a shit. I don't play halo for the story so much as I do for the game play, coop, multiplayer, forge etc etc... And man oh man does Reach offer a campaign of alien ass kicking. Not one single level in Reach is a massive bore or frustration. No library or repeat missions like in halo 1. No arbiter missions like in halo 2. No cortana like mission like in halo 3. No boring as fuck missions like in halo 4 and 5. Every mission of Reach offers what halo combat is all about.
Honestly, Reach was my favorite Halo game. It was also my intro to the franchise, so of course I'm gonna be naturally defensive about it. I was really on the fence about continuing to watch the video in the first few minutes, but holy shit did you win me over. That part minutes in where you talk about 'what if the opening segment had been done in reverse' is a genius analysis. Liked and faved.
Reach pretty much had the best Halo sandbox of modes, vehicles, weapons, and enemies to date. To me, Reach is the ultimate representation of the Human-Covenant war and the original trilogy of games.
I respect your output man but I have the feeling you might've had the nostalgia goggles on when you made this. I felt as if you compared this to Halo 2 and Halo 3 more so then you have with the previous videos. To this day I've put in hundreds of hours onto Reach through the last six years and I still hold it as the best game in the series, I've played every game since 2002 when I finally got an Xbox. Half the time I spent was Multiplayer on Invasion and the other half was on Custom games with my best friends. Reach on my old Xbox took up 80GBs of space with all the custom maps and game modes we downloaded or made up. That's alot for just a 120GB HDD and all of that was just Forge content. I love this game and I have it on my bookshelf so I won't lose it or forget the good times. Reach has been one of the best games I've ever played.
I feel the same way. It's my most played game... Lucas here makes some good points. Like how the game wasn't taken as seriously on a competitive level compared to halo 2 and 3. Or how armor abilities came to be. He's right about that although some arguments can be made about those topics... But a lot of stuff he says is just plain stupid... The spartans reactions make sense because they have gone up against the covies before. They are super soldiers with genetic alterations trained to keep their kool and kick some ass at a super human level. Why would they freak out like 16 year old girls? It makes sense that they would remain fairly calm and control the situations of combat. The game is about soldiers fighting off waves of enemy aliens... Fire fight is a mode about soldiers fighting off waves of enemy aliens... How again does fire fight not fit into the game???? He says invasion is the best part of the game. Really Lucas? That's kind of hard for me to take your word on when you yourself have only played 30 matches of invasion mean while you have played modes in the competitive playlists about 25x times more than you do invasion... Man of your word much? I don't think so...
LordHeebrial Wow! Same here! I remember how excited I was way in 2010 when I was launching games on BTB, Infection, team slayers or one of my favorite modes, Invasion! Last game I played and I had this kind of same feeling it was the game Ark Survival Evolved But still Halo Reach has been the best game for me!
I actually like the Armor abilities. It adds strategies to the game you wouldn't normally encounter. Sneaking away when losing in a combat situation, taking some by surprise, rushing someone when reloading, and then the other way around. Maybe you notice a certain player use a certain strategy alot, and have to plan around it. Maybe the enemy notices this for you, and you change the ability to surprise them. All around fun to strategize about.
Yea he says that the armour abilities take skill out of the game. If he played multiplayer properly then he would see that some people could use the abilities in creative ways.
We're entitled to our own opinions thank you. I don't need some self proclaimed expert to tell me what I like and don't like. Just because your bio brags about you playing Halo for a while doesn't mean you can say "it's above your pay grade" lol.
"I agree. And even if you don't like AA... You can play a playlist where the armor abilities are disabled soooo yeah..." No competitive player would agree that armor abilities "add strategy to the game". They shorten the skill gap the same way bloom did. Though, you're right they had playlists without these annoyances, they should've made Armor Abilities more like power weapons. And with Armor lock starting out being like the title update version, where the more damage you deal to it, the less it lasts(and not basically a pause button).
The Armor Abiliites were balanced and added in the fourth element of strategy which made me love the game. Brutes had a lore reason why they were "weak" in Reach. Reach was more of a hopeless endeavor, meaning the hardcore Halo fans those who have read the books and studied Halo thoroughly knew the outcome of Reach, but we didnt expect it to be a long drawn out narrative where Spartans fought to their last breath to save the remnants of the UNSC on Reach, we experienced the Lone Wolf being the major player to end the war that had devastated the entire UNSC. That is what made the campaign, its many missions that you called out were meant as a sort of recon missions, going in to tear the Covenant's supply lines instead of a straight forward assault until the UNSC was able to do so. In Reach you werent some big Spartan like Master Chief, but you werent a helpless ODST either. You were a mix of the two, the Spartan III's were meant to be expendable, and that is what the game showed off. Altogether Reach is my second favorite Halo game, right after 3, as i spent almost as many hours on Reach as i did 3, i spent many hours forging, many other hours playing match after match having tons of fun and all around loving every minute of it. The many who hate on the game, give it undeserved hate and fall into the category of wanting a "Halo 2 or Halo 3 re-do" in Halo Reach, the game was made to tell a story, bring the story in full circle, while also showing another side of Halo we dont usually see, the expendable Spartans. The ones that Master Chief stood out on, Chief was THE SPARTAN every looked up to as he was the best of the best in the UNSC. We were shown the lesser known Spartans, the ones who worked right alongside the Marines and Army, on a world we had only heard about. Reach was Bungie's final hoorah, and they went out in a bang. Creating a game that brought everything we love about Halo together. They kept Halo from falling under. Hopefully you do a Halo 4 video soon as i desperately wanna see your output on that lol
I know it doesn't excuse it, but part of the reason Noble Team lacks personality is probably because they're Spartans. The "I'm a badass" gameplay contrasts the "You 'lose'" in the end wasn't necessarily bad, because the game assumes that you know Reach falls and what not. Good vid though.
Thanks, and yeah, I don't think that excuses it haha. I think there was an opportunity to contrast the gameplay with the story, but due to no surprises in said story, its hard to feel that sense of dread. You can't feel hopelessness if you didn't have hope earlier.
Part of the reason Noble team ;acled personality was comprised of spartan 2s. So because they were kidnapped at a certain age and started combat with no knowledge of what its like to feel emotion or passion and with the physcological effects of war will only amplify and harden that effect. Think nothing, feel nothing.
Dude...why are you hating on Reach so much? I will not say its perfect, but it is one of the best Halo games since it has the best feeling of war in it. The whole point of Reach is you are fighting a battle you know you've already lost which is shown perfectly in the levels Exodus and Alexandria. The last level takes regular horde mode and completely upgrades it, you feel completely hopeless as just endless waves of Covenant pile through you. It is just Reach and I love it
Bungie had always put enjoyment before cool stuff. In Reach, I'm not having much fun when I'm just constantly shooting the same infantry over and over but with different weapons. The Package is the only mission where there's vehicle focus, but it's short lived and involves you just sitting around and waiting for the fuel rod shade turret to not shoot at you. Even New Alexandria doesn't have much vehicle focus. Banshees aren't focused and the shade turrets are easy as shit to take out. But that's the thing. I can still enjoy a game if I dislike certain parts of it. I'm still playing Reach right now (albeit, mostly multiplayer), and it's fun as shit. I just wish the campaign had more to it.
Gonna be honest here. I'd normally be the first person to say that they don't like Reach all that much, and honestly I don't. Especially in comparison to earlier Halo games... but this video I found to be pretty overly critical and exaggerated. Even for my Halo Reach opinions. It shouldn't be titled "Halo: Reach... 6 years later" It should be titled "Everything I could find wrong with Halo: Reach". Yah, it touches a few times on "good aspects", but they're so far in between, and each positive is usually met with a "but" with a negative immediately discrediting or invalidating it. Again, definitely not a Reach fanboy. There's more I don't like than I do about it a lot of times, but this.. this seems heavily riddled with "things I could find to say bad" about it. Of course, everything is opinion, and mileage may vary.
Yeah I was expecting him to talk about game mechanics and how amazing the story holds up and its theme but hes just ripping his pants off and unloading onto this thing.
@@aolson1111 haven’t seen this in a while but If I remember right he said he hated the music, the gameplay, and the story. When each is just as good as any other halo game if not better.
KOONGLE exactly six stayed knowing he will die so humanity will have a chance if that is not halo then when many marines died giving time for everyone else then what is?
Well said Devin. A big part of what makes the halo story admirable is because of it's heroic characters are so willing to sacrifice themselves to save the people they love and are trying to protect. It's heroic. How is that not a massive blow-up in story telling? A character dying while being heroic is boring now?
The characters were definitely stereotypical in many ways-- not to say you couldn't connect with them-- but Reach had an **incredible** atmosphere, beginning with the first cutscene. That feeling of hopelessness, it's nice to see a halo game take it on so successfully.
excited to see Halo 4's vid. I have a strongly negative opinion towards it opposed to most halo games. however I do find myself on the multiplayer still today.
@@theincrediblefella7984 most of the points the guy makes in the video are decent but he presents the video like an analysis or review which is retarded bcs all he did was look at the negatives. So he doesn’t hate the video because of the contents of the criticism but more rly that the video is pretty much only criticism
@@weenman221 Did you really just try and say the video is bad because it's only criticisms? You must get suicidal when you see a video dunking on something you like, don't you?
@@theincrediblefella7984 ok i admit i mispoke there what i meant was that though most of his criticisms are valid its not a proper review of the game as he doesnt touch on many aspects of how the game is also good. Im just saying that his video is presented as a review of the full game when hes clearly just picking out the negatives.
agreed, Activision isn't exactly lenient with what they want the developer to deliver. I stand by my opinion that Bungie should have tried to go with Take-Two Interactive as from games they've published it seems that they allow a lot more freedom to the developers
JOLTLORD Yeah EA is very greedy when it comes to season passes and rushing games. But Activision just feels worse. They rehash games over and over with season passes and micro transactions. Publish mediocre or bad cash grabs and shut down the studios who made it. Or in destiny's case, ruin the development and get rid of problematic employees.
+A most excellent dude who is totally not bogus! Yeah I think Bungie now is just a former shell of themselves so my story of halo ended with 3. dont care what happens to halo here on out.
Because you went in to it to enjoy it, not pick out things like "There aren't tough enemies on normal difficulty". This video doesn't even point out how Heroic and Legendary added way more elites such as the jump jet rangers with needle rifles who were actually quite deadly.
Druark if you play halo alone not in legendary then you are a noob and should not say if the game was good. odst for example is a great single player halo game if you play legendary with skulls in the open world New Mombasa.
Mato Kuroi Okay, what are you even trying to say? Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? cause that is the most horrible 2 sentences ever. If you're trying to be sarcastic, then you're missing my point entirely from my last comment. He complained about the game just having lots of cannon fodder enemies, at the low difficulties that's true because they're for the average joe not the people who play for a challenge. Hence why there are actually 4 difficulty levels.
All the footage I captured was from a playthrough I did on Heroic. Even on that difficulty, the game still throws in lots of cannon fodder (which include the Brutes). As I explain in the video, I believe this was done for balancing reasons. How you got the idea I was talking about normal difficulty is beyond me.
Edwin Drake I agree completely. But the only reason that halo 5's multiplayer is good is because like every game nowadays they focus more on multiplayer and then the campaign sucks ass. Game devs are just a bunch of money hungry cunts now.
I thought Halo 4 and 5 were the worst of the Halo series. Just my opinion. I didn't think they had the feel of what Halo is supposed to be. I feel like 343 is just catering to the 13 year old CoD lovers.
I think your underplaying a lot of the elements while overplaying a lot of minor issues. Also reach came out before a lot of the tropes your complaining about became a major thing. Of course the team isn't going to just welcome you in with open arms and be all chatty, your the new guy in a tightly nit group of Spartans who already barely talk, plus their home world where they grew up is being destroyed. While there could have been some improvements I still think reach is an amazing game and what it accomplishes vastly outweigh the issues
TopHatPenguin you're basically defending weaker aspects of the writing that fail to achieve their stated aims. I love Reach but in this respect it could have been done better. You don't need characters to talk to show who they are, you just need them to do anything that demonstrates personality. Common things would be like a character seen handling a cross to show they're religious, having books in their quarters to show they're well read. Their reactions to things can be muted but nuanced, having one character be more blunt and another more philosophical for example. The little things that come from people reflecting that they're different from one another. Reach's script attempts this, we see that Kat is the scary planner lady, Emile is the quiet tough guy, Jorge is compassionate etc. But we don't get to know them that well, a real sense of who they are as people. Other than generic leader, who is Carter? What is anything Jun likes or dislikes? I don't find it disappointing, but it's worth acknowledging the these things can be done better. Silent movies and silent characters for decades and decades have conveyed complexity and feeling, it's not too much to ask for a 21st century videogame to possess some of that when one its own ambitions is to portray its protagonists as distinct, sympathetic human beings.
Actually none of the spartans 3s grew up on reach. They were all trained on the shield world Onyx. The only one with an emotional connection to reach was jorge.
+GhostSamurai Honestly, I think the game did its best given the amount of characters it had to introduced and the overall bleak narrative. For example, Jun's actions and attitude in the mission Nightfall serve to characterize him pretty well, unlike the rest of the missions where you are with Noble Team, in Nightfall Jun prefers to separate himself from the player suggesting the fact that he likes to be alone, he is quite chatty during the mission despite the fact that it's supposed to a covert operation, he cracks a joke when Kat suggests that direct action may be necessary, he jokes around with the militia when he tells them that they are going to steal back the weapons that they initially stole from the UNSC, he is genuinely amazed when he sees the Guta, and so on. With Carter we get a lot of characterization through his interaction with Kat in the cutscene at the beginning of Long Night of Solace, we see how much he grieves over Kat and how much he starts to resent the Covenant in The Package, and we get to see how much he cares about his team through his sacrifice in the Pillar of Autumn. Jorge's sacrifice also showed how much he loved his home planet, the way in which Emile goes out shows how fearless he is, and so on. Honestly, whenever I hear people complain that Noble Team was "underdeveloped" I always think that they must not have been paying attention to not just what happens during the game's cutscenes, but also during the missions themselves (and to a certain degree this is understandable). Could it have been done better? Yes, but I think that could have only happened in a different settings and if the events in the game were different.
you talk like Reach came out like three decades before it did. every character trope its taking is from something like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, etc etc. War movies have existed as long as movies have existed, and they even stole a lot of their tropes from precursor science fiction.
ThatGuyJay3 Ikr it feels like yesterday I was a little kid in 6th grade when the game came out. Played this so much With the best memories in my gaming career.
Half of the criticisms were fair. I think the mention of armor abilities and the first half of the campaign being weak are true. However a lot of the other criticisms were over critical. The part about Noble team was ridiculous, they're far more fleshed out and interesting than previous Halo characters. Almost Everybody felt heavy emotions watching noble 6's death. it was iconic.
Noble Team is more fleshed out than previous Halo characters, but I'd argue that's not a very high standard to live up to. Noble 6's death is bound to be the most emotionally gripping since he/she is us. I do hope Halo games manage to create a great squad of characters someday, as its rare in gaming as a whole.
Raycevick is also full of shit balls. He says invasion is his favorite part of the game but his gamertag stats say he has hardly played it compared to other playlists. HMmmmmm...
This was a really great in depth analysis of Reach, but it hasnt decreased my love for it at all. In my eyes, Reach is and always will be the best Halo game developed
***** In your opinion yes. In my opinion no. Likes and dislikes are relative. Lets not turn this into an argument. How about we just agree to disagree?
"What Bungie has done is made a story about a squad that is unable to prevent disaster" yeah because one squad of Spartan IIIs can stop an entire covenant invasion fleet! There were other Spartan III squads confirmed dead on Reach too. Maybe if it was 50 Spartan IIs they could've held out indefinitely but, what do you expect them to do? Go super saiyan? They are outnumbered, outgunned, and have inferior technology. The whole point of the Halo franchise is that humanity is fighting a losing war and might very well become extinct.
The spartan 2 squads on reach were largely wiped out as well, with few surviving. Master chief thought he may have been the last spartan 2 because of how devastating the battle was. There was no way the spartan could have won, even if every last spartan 2 and 3 was present because of covenant space superiority. A spartan 2 can’t do much when they’re being glassed.
LASO is a real bitch lol. Did the final missions once on LASO with my bro in split screen coop. We were so frustrated lol. Took us about 2 hours to beat it.
I don't agree with many things in this video but i do lile the idea of the very first encounter with the covenant being more difficult. Even when playing on legendary, the first encounter is just jackals and grunts. If there were some elites in the beginning too, it would be more on the same difficulty scale of the rest of the game.
I remember finishing this game on legendary and feeling so accomplished! parents called me for dinner, I knicked my Xbox and it destroyed the disc and never played it again. I imagine if I went to dinner on their first call I would have done the same thing except ON THE LAST MISSION then maybe kms later. R.I.P reach :')
lol hilarious story. I was playing halo 3 and was about to beat the game and my cheap ass shit controllers rubber on the thumb stick fell off. I was playing on hard pointy plastic stubs jabbing into my left thumb. It fuckin hurt and made it hard to aim but I beat the game anyways because it was that bad ass lol. Still is : )
I do not understand your reasoning for saying that Reach having firefight doesn't make sense. "Gears of wars is a game where you're a lumbering soldier with high damage weapons. A Wave defense gamemode makes sense." "Halo Reach is a game where you're a super soldier clad in power armor with the ability to save the human race. A Wave Defense mode makes no sense." UHM, I do not follow. Because if anything, it makes more sense for Reach to have one since you are trying to save a world from an ALIEN INVASION. Please, please reply to this explaining more. I love your videos, I do. But I really need this explained. Because this isn't passing my think test.
+ion bing The person who made this video was seemingly unaware that back when Reach was launched there were plenty of Firefight variants that focused on survival instead of high scores. As Reach features the most deadly iteration of the Covenant in the entire franchise (with the exception of the wildly unbalanced Halo 2), a wave defense mode make perfect sense and there is a very good reason why the Halo community loved it. Plus you can make the game mode as difficult as you want through tweaking numerous settings and then play with your friends, just like the reviewer acknowledged, so I still don't see the point of his argument.
Gameplay is what he was talking about. Halo is fun when aggressiveness is part of the fight. Each squad of covenant is like a little, fast paced puzzle. When you are playing defensively, you have your positioning already, weapons are supplied to you before a fight, and covenant attack in a predictable manner. Also, you’re a spartan, long term consequences are minimal compared to ODST’s, melee is far more viable, and your speed is increased. Customization be damned, it never feels like the covenant can push you back or corner you. That’s baked into the games design, lowering Heath or other options can’t resolve it. Reason is because it works so well in campaign. The covenant may not be super deadly in this game, even on legendary since they all fold to the DMR, and elites to the PP and DMR. But positioning and movement makes fights interesting and fun, taking that out makes the game a bit more boring, since the responsibility of a aggressive push is now the responsibility of the AI, and they are not nearly smart enough to employ tactics during that. Firefight can be mindless fun on reach, but a lot of what makes campaign fun is removed, it really doesn’t help that the maps mostly don’t feel designed for the mode, because in large part, they are designed for something else.
Also, not many people were playing firefight, at least not publicly. Many of the firefight playlists were getting 200 people at most, while slayer was getting around 15000. This was a few months after launch if I remember correctly.
Agent Louisiana. Yeah I couldn’t see his point of view on that one. To me, being a super soldier makes MORE sense to have a defensive mode against enemy waves. You’re basically holding out as long as you can to defend an alien invasion! Taking on overwhelming odds makes more sense because you have the capacity to do so, being a super soldier and all.....like the covenant are throwing all their forces at you because you’re such a threat. One moment he’s complaining you don’t feel like a badass, and the next, you feel ‘too powerful’ in firefight. He’s very contradictory
Hell yeah I just picked it up again. Can you believe Microsoft charges $49.95 for Reach when you can pick it up for like $7 from a bargain bin? Reach is 100x better than Destiny.
[Anonymous] Retro I loved reach I feel once bungee switched over they instantly started falling apart story wise...I mean the multi-player was cool but once they hit halo 5....dead specailly since couch coop is gone I relied on this game to always give me and my friends coop but yeah nope these days all that matters is money not how we all feel
As much as I like your analysis in this series I feel like this video in particular is the most biased towards the original trilogy. Especially the comment about firefight. They tried to inject variety into an already tired franchise that even the fanbase thought hit it's peak several years before. And I feel like your complaint is related too strongly to the original games and not particularly objective towards how it works with this game specifically. Personally I think Firefight was best in Reach largely due to customization and it's much more frantic and arcadey nature compared to ODST where it in general lacked a lot of variety. The amount of customization ranging from the different game modes to countless amounts of custom gamemodes made it a real treat to play. Especially since you could play Firefight competitively if you wanted, a player could play on the side of the covenant. Customization was something that I felt the game did really well and since I mostly play campaign/firefight as opposed to competitive I really enjoyed. It's one reason I'm disappointed in Halo 4/5 not attempting the same thing and just reusing the master chief over and over for the campaign. Personally I think MLG is the worst part of the Halo community and 343 catering to it I think has resulted in the games getting worse over time. While I don't think Reach is a perfect game I really don't think it's as bad as you've made out in this video. Especially compared to the 343 developed games.
***** You guys seem to missing the point, they were still even simpler to kill in Reach, if you compare a brute with a shield in 3+ to a brute with a helmet in reach. On legendary a Brute will stilll die in a few head shots on reach whilst the shield will supplement more than 3 times the amount of head shots Its like all the people saying God of War 4s dumbed down combat is fine because GoW1-3's combat wasn't particularly in-depth either. Just because the old stuff was easy doesn't mean the new stuff being even easier, is justifiable. In fact, its a problem because they should have done the opposite to compensate for that.
This guy is overly-critical and misses the entire point of Reach's story. Its not a character-driven story, its setting-driven. The fact that Noble team isn't fleshed out is the entire point- the campaign is a narrative characterized by the desperate state of the Human-Covenant war. You are a Spartan, the finest class of warrior that Humanity has, and yet there is barely anything you can do; the Covenant wipe out the greatest UNSC stronghold within days. Reach paints the picture of what the war was like before the discovery of Halo and the turning of the tide- Humanity is fighting the long defeat, with extinction drawing closer each day. Self-sacrifice is the key theme here. Only through self-sacrifice could your Spartan buy humanity the time it needed to gain an advantage (forerunner tech) and fight harder.
Well said, that's why it's one of my favourite campaigns in the halo series. As for the game, I can't believe COG actually tried to put the hammer down on firefight. I remember it was the coolest mode to play with my mates back in the day, with a bunch of downloadable maps, including installation 04.
Well said both of you. Don't forget being able to customize fire fight in great detail! As for the story... Something I hear haters say is that noble team wasn't well developed but isn't that kind of the point? The story is about a planet going to shit from a alien invasion and soldiers fighting to their last breath. There isn't time to sit down and drink a beer with them to get to know who they are. The story is about war... And war is depressing as fuck. You're not going to get a chance to get inside the heads of the characters 100% like in a final fantasy game or something lol. Also... You never got to truly know Master chief in halo 1-3 unless you dive into books and shit. Those games didn't talk about his child hood and personality all that much either. Where were you Halo Reach haters back then??? These people right? Hilarious...
Even if it is setting driven they do a shit job of making reach an interesting place. They do little to make it feel like a fleshed out world. Sure you see some wildlife in the first mission, but that’s about it. Generic is probably the best word to describe this game
The Master Grief Collection if you like characters their death will hit you harder, your “war is depressing as fuck” is not an excuse to make a boring planet with even more boring characters
Jard also they don't have time to chat and fuck around with you in the campaign, reach is being invaded. It's all about being in a war that your trying so desperately to win but cannot
I came down to say this Petr Patz, Halo Reach and Halo 2 are my favourites with Halo 3 soooo close behind. (Literally just for the last mission honestly.)
Halo Reach was amazing. The music, the characters and the gameplay was all amazing. It was something different but still Halo at it's core. Halo 4 tried this and felt too different and lost the fans.
***** It has it's faults but to me everything was nice. I mean I'm not sure what else to expect from a Halo Game. The character development and enemy design could have been better but overall I really enjoyed the game and was able to replay it with no problems.
Actually Reach was just about as popular as halo 3. What unpopular elements of Reach are you talking about? Most halo players love Reach. You need to stop listening to the very vocal but small minority of bitchy halo players.
No memorable quotes? My dude here is literally one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite characters. Guess who it’s from: “I’m ready! How ‘bout you?!
5 wasn't trash, but it was a big letdown, like a balloon, it was blown up big, ley it fly around and everybody payed attention to it for a while, but eventually conversation died down about except for the few people still thinking about using that balloon.
Vashtheultimate Yeah, but that doesn't excuse that he was trashing it with insane bias for 27 minutes beforehand. He's saying it's good after all to avoid hate, and it's childish. He should have stuck to his guns and just stated that he didn't like the game.
Raycevick Entirely different classes of enemies spawn based on your diffuculty. Easy and heroic are completely different and legendary is a whole different ball game.
None of which change inherit problems with the amount of cannon fodder to compensate for game balance and one-button save me from X situation abilities.
Raycevick I've played this campaign on legendary. i can tell you that armour abilities do not guarantee an easy victory. Armor lock next to hunters or any elite ranked ultra or above and the moment you come out you are dead. On easy and normal armor abilities are designed that way for Halo players who are just playing to have fun. There are a lot of moments with cannon fodder I agree but there are many moments that make up for that. For example the four ultras of the apocalypse on the space mission.
I didn't say in the video that they make the game easier, I said they make the game less interesting to play because abilities lower the number of decisions to make on the fly. There are too many situations where you either use them to save your life (even if only for a brief time) or you just die. They don't add to the sandbox and in many cases, take away from it as in the case of the drop shield which makes the health system entirely useless. Every video I make on the Halo series is done with a heroic playthrough, and there's never been an issue with tension until Reach. By the way, I appreciate your articulated comments. Far too many people that bring up this subject just spew cliche git gud exhortations.
Haha, that clip was from an old gameplay montage I made a few months after the game's launch. Me and a group of friends played it in a packed custom lobby. Good times.
Soyborne. Born, made, and undone by the soy. Obviously. No need to state the obvious. ‘Perfect’ by most people’s definitions/people with common sense, = as good as can reasonably be.
@@TheJayson8899 *Some more varied level design, especially beyond the exact same rooms and halls being spammed forty times across multiple missions, would have been nice for my sanity.*
Brendan Forish for old halo players yes the guns sighrs were changed the button to aim was moved to the left trigger making it fell more needed to aim the movement feels like a parkor game almost and new guns and vechicles made it a prettymuch new game that has spartans in it
Having watched some of your other content (and subbed as a result) this one comes off as...needlessly petty and jaded. Kinda like you're being less charitable and purposefully, well, mean to appeal to a perceived audience.
Yeah, this is a huge contrast to his halo 4 video where he felt like he was being overly apologetic by constantly saying “Well these are problems, but nothing that the other games had as well”
I agree, but at least he's not directly misrepresenting the game like he did with ODST such as when he claimed that Sadie's story doesn't tie back into the main plot of the game despite her father's actions being directly tied to why the ODST quad was diverted away from the super carrier in the first place which you only find out in the later discovered audio logs. I do think he misrepresented the story and characters of this game when he basically said they were weak, but that could be subjective even if I have literally no idea how someone could subjectively come to that conclusion about Rach of all games. That all being said, I think that @COGconnected here is just overdoing it on the detail of his negative opinions, and not that he holds more negative opinions than the other. This can often make people think the critic is putting forth too many negative comments, when in reality it's just an increase to run-time of negative comments while providing a more balanced total count of negative to positive. Anyway, if OP wants to avoid creating this kind of disconnect in the future, he could give better context by pointing out with each criticism how small it actually is to the game as a whole more often, like he did when he pointed out how many hours he's put into the game.
halo reach is still my all time favorite, especially the artstyle but it's definitely true that the campaign is an utter letdown though. bungie can do many things, but they can never engage in an innovative and interesting way. all their characters are always bland. but man, I never had and issue with circular maps. they were great.
@Geralt of Trivia Compare how many things he defended, justified, or praised in his other Halo videos to how much he seemed to actively avoid complimenting in this one. In fact, try to count the amount of positives he mentioned that he didn’t promptly undermine. His bias was impossible to hide here. He wasn’t even wrong about a lot of the things he said, there were just so many things he _didn’t_ say that he’d probably be willing to mention in his other retrospectives. Overall, he was just way less forgiving with this game for no apparent reason beyond his personal feelings for it. Which is contradictory to what the OP quoted from him. Then you stroll in and blindly assume the OP meant he was objectively wrong without even _considering_ the idea that he *just wasn’t objective.*
I don't. He makes good points but also retarded points lol. He's right about how armor abilities game to be and how the game launched poorly in the eyes of competitive players until more competitive based features were added to the game later. Everything else though is either debatable or just plain stupid... Especially his take on fire fight. He thinks it shouldn't be in the game... Fire fight is about soldiers fighting off waves of aliens... The game is about soldiers fighting off waves of aliens... How does fire fight not fit into this game again? LOL!
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 because some of the least fun parts of the halo games are defense portions. The library, the beginning of outskirts, etc. The games are more fun when youre pushing to an objective and killing aliens. I dont completely agree that it shouldnt be in the game. But i definitely get where its coming from.
I got the most intense chills when I heard that sweeping Reach soundtrack... Ahhhh the memories, before Halo 4 killed my Halo enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, I loved Halo 4, but for some reason, it killed me.
Sinister a master piece! If you want to build in very specific locations. With a very small set of items. And maps that are grey, and strip away depth perception.
idk, I kind of like the feeling how they approached the story telling, and the fact that each mission, every enemy you kill is fruitless, when you all die, and the planet is glassed, is kind of unique.
I disagree with 90% of the things you said and was quite upset during the entire video, but to each is own. For me, the game wasn't too far from perfect :)
I feel the same exact way. He calls the first level empty and bitches about it... Even though it makes sense that it would feel empty since it's the country side of Reach and people are trying to hide from aliens... He calls odst lifeless and empty and complains about it... Even though a alien invasion just happened. Does he really expect pizza hut to be open? He complains about noble team not being surprised when the covies land... Even though they actually do sound fairly surprised and act properly considering that they are a team of bad ass cyborg commandos who have been trained since birth to deal with extreme combat situations. Did he really expect them to freak out like a bunch of little girls? He says fire fight doesn't fit in a game like halo Reach. A game mode that's about stopping waves of aliens from taking over in a game about stopping waves of aliens from taking over doesn't belong? That's retarded... He complains that the games story doesn't to the book justice but why should it? The games came before the books so the games should make whatever story they want. Also... Have you read the book? 1/3rd of it is spartan kids training. Doesn't that sound boring? Fuck that lol. The story in the game is just fine. He says invasion is his favorite mode yet his gamer tag says he barely even played invasion. What a two timing asshole this guy is lol. Says one thing and then does something else. Typical...
I feel this whole critique was tainted by a fierce love of halo 2. Notice how often he references the game and how positive his review of it was bias is unavoidable unfortunately.
Impossibility??? Haha this is probably the best Halo game ever made, with the longest lasting Halo community on Xbox. The best way to finish of the Halo series.
People still play Halo 3, and it peaked it managed to peak as the #1 more played game on Xbox Live 3 years after release, Reach couldn't even managed that 3 weeks after release.
Tesla is right. I checked at midnight a few weeks back and Reach has thousands still playing. It said 6000 on a friday night. I also checked Halo 4 right afterward. It has 1000ish people. Then I checked halo 3... 250 lol. Clearly Calimbo over here is correct. Reach has a more loyal fanbase than halo 3 and has aged better than part 3. Reach... Like it or not... Has the longest living community. I even made a video about it to prove it lol. And as for what Ryan Davies just said... He's right but I don't know what point he's trying to make... Judging a games quality based on it's popularity is fucking stupid. With his logic we might as well say cod games are better than reach and halo 3 lol. There are tons of good reasons why halo 3 was more played once upon a time than Reach was... Halo 3 was the sequel to halo 2. The game that made online console shooters a thing. Halo Reach came right after ODST. A cash grab game that wasn't bad but it was a over priced expansion to halo 3 which was pretty gay. People were happy with halo 2 so of course they couldn't wait for halo 3. People were mixed about odst so of course they were hesitant about halo reach. Halo 3 was also the big finale of the trilogy. Halo 3 was one of the most hyped up games of all time. Reach was not. Halo 3 features the main story with the main characters that people know about. MC... Cortana... Reach doesn't really feature those characters so a lot of people who play the halo games for the story didn't take as much interest. Reach wasn't as popular with the competitive crowd as halo 2 and 3 were because the 1-50 rank system was gone. Reach came out when the franchise was getting old. A lot of people were haloed out. Reach had far more online games to compete with than halo 3 did. In 2007 halo 3 had to compete with cod 4 and barely won in terms of popularity. In 2008 there was no new halo game and world at war came out. Halo 3 barely beat that game in popularity too. Then MW2 came out and eventually dominated Halo 3's popularity. That's when cod stole the spotlight from halo. Halo was no longer the most popular shooting game on the xbox. Then Reach came out at a time when halo was not as popular as it used to be. It makes sense that that it wasn't as popular... AT THE TIME! Now Reach gets played way fucking more than halo 3. So according to you're logic halo 3 was better once but now it isn't. Retarded logic my friend... The truth of the matter is that halo reach offers far more replay value than halo 3 does. There is more reason to come back and play Reach than there is with halo 3.
When you said "armour abilities actively remove tension from battles" that is incorrect. Don't you realise that the tension is filled up again once you realise the enemy players also have special abilities. For example if you use active camo you have the advantage of being invisible and sneaking around which removes the tension of getting sniped or attacked from behind since you can hide. However you have the added tension of knowing that if you are spotted it's harder to escape from enemies who have sprint, and you can't get away easily if you are ganged up on. You see? Armour abilities add another layer to gameplay, the tension is not reduced because yes, you have abilities that can save you, but so does the enemy!
Good point. Or like how armor lock removes tension of getting hurt but once it wares off... Tension erupts as you are now in deep shit perhaps lol. Or flying too high with jet pack only to splatter on the ground. AA adds risk and reward. And if you don't like AAs... Just play anniversary lol problem solved...
When Kat died in your arms it broke my heart because I loved the team so much, this was and will continue to be my favorite game it's so sad to see hardly anybody plays it anymore. Spartans never die there just missing in action.
557deadpool I fucking hated kat tbh. her character really never developed at all and I found her to be more annoying than anything. her death was also pretty shit. a lone needle at the end of a firefight? meh.
HugoElcabezas that's kinda what I was thinking play it on legendary and or with all the skulls on then tell me they're unchallenging idk how many times I died during my legendary run through I don't even remember if I finished and I was pretty damn good at the game
Yeah, on the dam covenant ship, the elites, after knocking down their shield, they armor lock to come back up fully covered, theres just not enough ammo for me to complete it solo, get pissed and quit
I'm suprised you didn't mention how reach issued in a new era in custom games along with its great forge. Also I agree with most of your opinions on this game, but your opinion on the characters and story. I'll admit the characters were generic but they weren't impossible to connect with. Now I might be deluded fanboy searching for something that doesn't exist but, I thought their generic archetypes helped them in the long run. Such as Jorge being the big but sensitive guy. We know he's a Spartan 2 and because of that he's seen some. Shite we wouldn't want to. For those who had just jumped into the series it would have sucked, but for those who knew a little bit or searched it up you could see a into it a bit more clearly. That being said I do wish they added a bit more context and in game banter I dunno. It sucks you were only a full team for 2 instances before everyone started dying 1 by 1. At the least there was something to these characters, more than I can say for halo 5
Yo these are really good btw I hope they get more attention in the future. They're about the closest you can get without nostalgia goggles. Reach is my favorite halo but the way you critique it really does hold weight.
Thanks! Glad to see someone who can still enjoy something while listening to a critique. For characters, while their archetypes are an easy thing to shake a stick at, that's not really the problem. Plenty of lovable characters are archetypes, it's how they're written and presented that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
Actually, now thinking about it, I' would've loved to see Halo 5's team coordination mechanics in Reach. They'd fit the whole "team" aspect of it if Bungie rewrote the story and the main character, obviously. Halo 5, btw, should've had them for Locke team, and had no team for MC at all, or maybe partner him with the Arbiter or something. Oh wait, my mind playing tricks on me. Halo 5 didn't even happen.
Halo 5's characters have a little bit of something, at least. Blue Team, not much, but Osiris does fairly well. (In fact, the only character to have an arc in the game is in Osiris). Frankly? I dare say Fireteam Osiris is one of 343's best additions to the franchise. Locke is something atypical of characters in the universe; being ex-ONI AND a Spartan, it would be expected that he would be very egotistical, and look down upon other species and colonists. But throughout the game he is shown as being respectful and fair to the Meridian colonists and the Sangheili, even the Swords of Sanghelios' Unggoy. He even ends the game by risking his life to stop Cortana's guardian from taking the Master Chief. Locke's a career soldier; he wants to simply do his job and rely on a team. In Nightfall, his team betrays him, resulting in him being less trusting. This however, changes in Halo 5 when he is with a team he feels he can finally depend on. Vale, I'm not entirely sure about her _character wise_ , but what she added to the campaign was nice, that connection with the Sangheili. She seems to have a very curious personality and a keen interest in the larger universe; for example, on Meridian as the guardian is rising, she points out that there are other guardians across the galaxy, and questions why this one in particular is the first one activated. Tanaka, oddly enough, is the only one with a character arc. Early in the game she is reserved and, as the game describes, "rarely fraternizes". But slowly throughout the game she talks more and more about her experiences on a glassed planet, and the pay-off moment for her character is just before Sunaion, when she gave the speech. It is also fair to mention that she seems very caring; during the evacuation from Meridian, she not only asks, but _demands_ that Osiris not take any of the colonist's flying vehicles; she's willing to risk her and her team's life, and their mission, if it means a few more colonists reach safety. Buck, well, he's Buck. We don't need an explanation for him. Though it is fair to mention that he and Locke have an interesting connection; being an ex-Squad leader(who doesn't want to lead anymore), he sympathizes with Locke's command position. In a way, Locke and Buck's relationship mirrors Locke's and Horrigan's in Nightfall; except Locke and Buck's relationship is way better than his with Horrigan, who was more manipulative and opportunistic than Buck.
Its not really 343's fault, I cant even imagine being in their position right now. Trying to make a game as good as the original 3 Halo games, ODST, and Reach, when really they don't have the same people doing it, nor the experience to do it.
While I definitely agree with some of your criticisms, this is still my favorite campaign in the series. I also adored the multiplayer (and spent more time with it in the long run than any other in the series). Also, Firefight in Reach is still my favorite "horde" mode in any game.
Makes the enemys more of a threat like you said it was lacking.... they obviously arent a threat to many players on normal. They even say throughout many halos heroic is recommended.
Always glad to see more content from you, even if I often don't agree with your opinions. The halo community really needs to step up to the bar you set, there's so few people doing analytical content and even fewer who do it at your level. I actually haven't watched your ODST video yet, so i'll have to do that after this. As always, I apologize for the length of my comment, feel free to respond to as much or as little of it as you want. Regarding the comment about how the opening section of Winter Contingency with Emile and Kat investigating the device makes you feel like not a part of the team, I figured this was intentional. It's well established in ancillary and EU material that the team was very hurt by Thom's death and didn't want a replacement, and the game itself does hint at this in the opening cinematic with Carter's comment of "you are filling some boots a lot of us would rather leave unfilled", or something to that effect. I do however agree with the general sentiment that throughout the game it feels more like you are an observer or a tag-along to NOBLE rather then a member. Again, for the first few missions, I think that feeling is fine, but as you said over time that should diminish, and it never does. Your idea about reversing the settings for the first mission is brilliant, I'm amazed nobody has suggested that before. Regarding armor abilities, my understanding is that people are mostly upset about the fact that it meant there were no longer even starts in multiplayer, which people see as a core part of the halo formula. There's also a large amount of people who have a vtriol towards anything even similar to CoD due to a perceived rivalry between the franchises and saw armor abilities as bungie "selling out" to their competitor. As far of your example of each armor ability being a crutch in some fashion to make up for some area where a player may lack in skill, i'm not sure I buy that. I mean, obviously the examples you present are valid, but it ignores the fact that by the same token they add opportunities where skillgaps are present in regards to clever usage of them, what ability is best used at that time, and in other ways. I don't think it's really possible to definitively say if they had a net postive or net negative effect on skillgap, especially since it's loadout based and that adds variables, wheras if they were like spartan abilities in 5, everybody has the same ones at all times and that acts as a "control" where you can more readily evaluate their impact. On a tangent, I never saw the single player level design/pacing advantage as being the primary bonus to having health. Rather, I felt the interplay between bullet and plasma based weapons and their varying damage depending on what you were hitting at the time as the main one, with the "less skilled players will get punished more per encounter even if they live through one" and the map design arguments you present mainly being pros in MP, not SP While I get what you are saying regarding the overuse of cannonfodder, from a lore perspective the ratio of enemy types makes sense as they have it. Having a ton of elites on the field in the same area would be totally inconsistent with the lore. I also take GREAT issue with you calling the DMR the BR successor. It is not. The Needle rifle is far more similar to the BR's role in terms of effective range then the DMR is. You allude to this in the video, but Bungie said in interviews the DMR was intended to be more of a long range support weapon and less of an all purpose general gun like the BR. In combination with the fact the AR's accuracy was greatly increased with the inclusion of bloom allowing bursting to be very useful in accurate fire allowed it to hit targets at ranges formerly only the BR could hit in past games, I think it's clear that this was bungie trying to fix the balance issues past games have had where the precision gun ends up being the only non power weapon worth having at any given time, which defeates the point of the two weapon limit which bungie has said was intended to prevent you from having tools that were suited to any situation at once, and obvious the CE magnum, and Halo 2/3 BR break that logic. Obviously, their attempt wasn't very successful, but at the very least it made the balance a little betterr in that the AR now has a much wider range of usability which gives it a less limited/useless role, not only due to the accuracy increase but due to the removal of the SMG which "frees up" space where it's the most viable gun to use. Regarding the "NOBLE team don't feel like people" I felt their degree of indivual personality compared to their no-noness all business side was perfect from a lore perspective. As S3's, they would be less "brainwashed" then S2's, but still very regimented in completing the mission and being professional soliders. If anything I would say Jorge has TOO much personality, him being an S2. As far as your overall criticisms about the plot and the lack of a tangible goal for noble team and lack of cohesion between cutscenes, I really don't have any comment. But I do think it's funny you point to the Halo ring being blown up or working alongside hunters or taking down scarabs as examples of good stuff when I recall you deriding those sort of "set pieces" in your videos for Halo 2 and Halo 3 (though I disagreed with you then). I do think that there's something about Reach that always feels a bit dull that I can't put my finger on in comparsion to the original trilogy, but I also feel that may have been intentional given the tone and visual design of the game and the lore events it deals with. It's SUPPOSED to be duller, bleaker, and not quite as exciting, no? I absolutely agree that firefight in reach almost completely lacks the feeling of desperation that it had in ODST, but I also enjoyed it as it's own sort of arcadey take on the idea, personally. To each his own in that regard. I also agree reach by far has the worst maps in the series, though both for FF and for MP maps, reach's modularity alleviates it a bit, but i'll get to that later. regarding invasion and your comment about it being a bit too video gamey and it could using more immersion, i'm a bit flabbergasted they never fused the generator defense FF mode into invasion where the generator was one stage of an invasion match. I have zero sympathy for MLG's dislike of reach. They and the competitive halo scene were an obnoxious nuisance and only made the game and the community worse, and contrary to what you said in the video, bungie did cater to them, they made the weapon balance worse from the Halo 3 beta to the final game in accordance with competitive player's feedback. Thankfully, they seem to be much better now, but I digress. At the end of the day, I feel reach's greatest strength is the sheer quantity and modularity of content it has to offer. Campaign, campaign matchmaking, firefight, firefight matchmaking, a host of settings to adjust for that, a full multiplayer suite, the second best forge in the franchise, etc. There's so, so many ways to play reach and while it may be behind it's predecessors in a few ways, all of that content is, at the very worst, still good. It's a great package and has to be one of the largest FPS games period in terms of content and modularity out of the box. Many of the game's issues in FF andf MP can just outright be fixed or lessened greatly by messing around with forge or the gametypes enough. It's a shame that Halo 5 is so lacking in content by contrast when the core mechanics are so strong.
Glad to see you back, Jabber. As par for the course, I don't believe I'll be able to address every point. Your first point is good, though I'd argue that getting the beacon for them would just allow that to be highlighted even more, it'd be interesting to see their reaction to someone they're not fond of help them out at the beginning regardless. As for not having more Elites because of Lore, I doubt that was the intention behind it, and if it was, it ends up hurting what they were going for. I say the DMR is a successor to the Battle Rifle because that's what the Executive Producer said in one of the Vidoc's. When it came to lack of awesome moments, Halo 2's moment of working alongside Hunters, and Halo 3's scarab weren't set-pieces, they were unique alterations to gameplay. Typically when something is a set-piece, it's when an encounter is 100% prefixed and can only be completed one way. While it's good Reach doesn't have those, it also doesn't have any interesting moments where it messes with your expectations. Every level in Reach, despite their variety in visuals and locations, end up feeling the same because for 90% of them, they are. Reach's wasn't so much determined by the game itself, but as you say, how modular it is and the community tools built around it. I think that's why this video may have rubbed some people the wrong way, and I why I do wish that I dived more into Forge World and the community features at the end. But, it's tool late now haha. Thanks for the comment! See ya next time.
Oh, I certainly don't think the lack of elites is due to them trying to be lore friendly (the game's timeline is actually inconsistent with the novels), but I was just saying i'd have been iffy on it due to that if there were more. It's part of what makes the Zealot squad feel special, too, it's not often you face a bunch of elites at once. On the subject of set pieces vs. awesome moments, which would you consider the bit of PoA to be where the scarabs and drop pods are falling out of the sky around you while you are on the mongoose with emile? Because while I agree HR does lack a lot of cool moments or set pieces (which I enjoy, actually), that moment always stands out to me. On a tangent, you should really link your channel in the descriptions, obviously you reply to comments a lot so all of us can find it that way, but a lot of people don't read comments.
You think that's bad, you should read some of I've seen by haters. Didn't know a RUclips critique of a video game could trigger some people to the point of insanity. I enjoy passionate comments when they're open-minded like the many between myself and Jabber; but ones by people that just hate my opinion make me laugh.
@Michael Bailey 'almost gonna look like H2 remastered cutscenes' not even close, they're upping the res and frame rate. It's getting the same treatment as Halo 3 did in the MCC. It'll still look great but that's definitely an exaggeration
Same. Although it's not everything I wanted... I wanted to kick more ass and live at the end but hey... It's war... Sometimes you die... Most times you die lol.
I think you have the story completely backwards. It’s a true tragic story that is supposed to seem like everything you do is hopeless. The missions where you simply “do what you are ordered too” are like that because you’re a soldier in a chain of command. Halos identity is based around this human militaristic style that is shown throughout the whole series. Doing things completely out of line the whole time would be out of character for an ex oni elite soldier who’s had most of his file blacked out. The characters all have just enough time for you to become attached before they die if you are willing to be. You just seem too pessimistic about the the story in a way that kept you from enjoying what was given to you as a parting gift of a great company that made a few beloved games. My favorite part about the first three games are that you’re in a helplessly dire situation and you look at it and laugh like the marines and Johnson do. This game just took a slightly grittier side to it and I like it for the different perspective. Anyways idk if you’ll even read or care about this but it’s the longest comment I’ve ever written so sorry if it’s hard to follow
13:08 when you said about the game was mainly trying to cripple the covenant which we know doesn't work. Well the way I see it, that's good story telling because it gives you a sense of hopelessness, that no matter how hard you try you always know in the back of your mind it will never quite be enough. It adds to the more human and desperate atmosphere and personally I think it worked well.
That's a popular response, but I'd argue it still doesn't work, because the player knows everything is going to fail, but the characters don't, and they're going to try anyway. This creates a permanent disconnect between the players and characters, which doesn't allow you to get immersed, and gives you less reasons to care.
Well, for me it made me feel more sorry for the characters, it's called 'pathetic fallacy' knowing something the character doesn't. And I think it was good as I knew their heroic acts would not work but and I created sympathy but we all have different opinions.
Batman Begins has more going on in it than just Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, that's why it works as a film. Also keep in mind that storytelling in games is very different than film.
I *adore* Halo: Reach. It's the main reason I bought both an Xbox 360 *and* an HD TV. I love the campaign. I agree with your idea of flipping the 1st mission back-to-front. I think that could have worked well. Changing the location of the beacon would have been nice, too. Personally, I found the deaths of each Spartan quite moving with the exception of Kat who probably should have been switched with Jun. Making the only senseless death also be the only female spartan was problematic for me. Both Carter and Emile's deaths still give me chills. I'm surprised you didn't talk about the datapads that reveal that the AIs are secretly influencing human society. While not as numerous as those in ODST, they certainly fleshed out the world.
Reach doesn't follow cannon. PERIOD I liked the game, yet it was far more difficult, ridiculous at times as elites were able to armor lock and come back up with full shields, making kills near impossible, for those of us trying to solo legendary.
Armor lock was bad, but in solo legendary campaign when an enemy armor locked it was an opportunity to re-gain my composure to continue the fight, it didn't feel impossible. Biggest problem, as with any game on the hardest difficulty, was finding ammo.
MrScrewedx Right, I remain trapped on the bridge, the elites are impossible to eliminate to make it back to the hanger, I have exhausted all ammo in the waves of the enemy in that one damn room between the bridge and hanger. Overcharged plasma pistol to remove armor, SOB armor locks and comes back up, they are bullet sponges when not needed to be.
That is easily the hardest part of the campaign, but I appreciated the challenge. I resorted to assassinations as much as possible and made it through. It was good fun.
it shows Carter getting wounded when then banshees shoot into the pelican. Although technically right, the narration at the end is Cortana. The story being made as you put it "badasses that can't change anything" was made this way so if a person whos first halo game can feel the helplessness of knowing you can't save your own planet. the scene where the covenant ships come out of slip space right after you lost an ally and an entire ship to take one out. Ive played all the halos but still found this one great despite knowing how it will end.
So true. Also... We didn't know EXACTLY how it would end. We didn't know that Halsey and Jun would survive. Also that whole... "Badasses that can't change anything" Idea is retarded. For 1... They did change something. They proved how hard humanities spartans are to fight towards the covies. They fear spartans for a reason lol. Noble team fucked a lot of them up really badly. They are not going to forget how hard taking Reach was. They didn't take Reach like candy from a baby. NO! They lost tons of capital ships lol. Sucks to be those nerds... They also helped MC and Cortana survive which set in motion mankinds turning point for the war against the covies. Without noble team Halo 1-5 wouldn't even be a thing since the Autumn would have just been shit on lol.
Sadly he was overly critical and just plain stupid in a lot of areas. I did a video complimenting his good points and bashing his shitty points. You should check it out : )
Your perspective on Reach's firefight mode is interesting. Personally, firefight is one of the things that kept me coming back to Reach even after Halo 4 came out. I'm trying to image a new gametype that's sort of like firefight in reverse. Instead of the covenant coming to kill you and you having to defend against them. Maybe, it's the Covenant guarding a base or some objective that are unaware of your presence upon the start of a match, thus allowing you to either stealthily sneak your way into a base and pick the covenant forces off one by one, or you could charge in guns blazing. You could customize what enemies appear at what points in the match. You could forge on these maps, allowing you to tweak spawn points, scenery, vehicles, and even the bases themselves.
I enjoyed your other videos... but I kind of feel like you have a personal dislike of Reach that you're projecting into your examination of the game. If someone went into Reach for the first time after watching this, they'd be expecting a HUGE letdown, probably because you're so easily trashing the game and tearing it to pieces. I honestly feel like this is a Cinemasins video with how nitpick-y it,s getting.
You're right. He praised halo 2's multiplayer glitches and exploits and said something on the line that H3 balance and refinement (less exploits) made the multiplayer not as fun as H2. I get it, it's subjective. But when someone says an exploit makes a game better, I question their reasoning. Not hating, but questioning. Also if you watched his H2 video, his nostalgia glasses is very noticeable, and I don't blame him. It's hard not to.
Also, what he pointed out about Reach's firefight mode... What's that? Spartans defending from hordes of Covenant troops isn't very realistic? It doesn't fit the narrative? Well, news flash, it fits the narrative a lot better than two teams of unicolored Spartans killing each other over and over and over again... over a skull on the ground. It's just way TOO nitpick-y. He slammed the best firefight experience in the franchise because apparently Spartans on the DEFENSE is unrealistic. Well, guess what the entire game's story is about...?
The first three games were basically superhero movies. You save the world and get the girl. I liked that Reach was different - your gratification doesn't come from a nice tidy ending, but from knowing you went down swinging and made them pay for it.
Gotta say I 100% disagree with your analysis of the story and characters. Reach has a lot of depth and a lot of people don't seem to be able to scratch more than the surface with it. The story is driven by a setting, the goal in the beginning is totally clear to anyone that plays it: defend Reach. Though the intro scene showing your spartans helmet shows you how this turns out, it gives the feeling that you already lost, that you're fighting an uphill battle. But the goal that brings more meaning to the story is the delivery of the package, because at that point you know Reach will fall and Halsey says it herself.
And the monologue afterwards is probably from a time after the events of Halo 3, when the fight was finished, the war was won, and humanity returned to Reach. Your helmet stays where it is as a symbol of soldiers who died defending their home.
No memorable dialogue you say? Little to no characterization?
"You know this stuff is stolen..."
"What? You gonna arrest me?"
"No. Gonna steal it back"
*Jun the sneaky sniper deals with sneaky thieves appropriately, and shows how smoothly he can handle situations
"This sanctioned, sir?"
"What do you think?"
"Oh...."
*Jorge is a little thick-skulled and is quite surprised when Carter, the by-the-books leader goes OFF the books to listen to Kat, the tech genius' plan.
Countless other examples I could list but the main point is your analysis of the story, characters, and setting doesn't pay close attention to the details that make Halo: Reach's story so awesome. Though that is just my opinion, I don't think you gave credit where credit was due there.
I think that's understandable. Reach's structure and setup worked for a lot of people and were invested and feeling the struggle and desperation of fighting a losing war. I personally didn't echo those emotions because the story didn't provide enough contrast and no surprises, and the characters weren't developed enough. The dialogue you mention is by no means bad, but I honestly had to pause and struggle to remember where they were said. That, and the archetypes the dialogue reveals are pretty cliche. Military professionals smoothly dealing with criminals or reckless behavior is something we've seen in all forms of storytelling numerous time.s
A missed opportunity I was going to bring up but scrapped due to already going into detail about the Covenant's introduction, was after Jorge blew up the Carrier and you land back on the Planet in the snow. I felt instead of a cutscene, it could've been gameplay where you're forced to walk completely alone in the dark snowy fields to the city, remembering who just scarified their life and foreshadowing the game's epilogue. But the game seems terrified of boring the player, so cutscenes always skip these possible moments.
I'm really glad you brought up some of the dialogue and structure. I've seen too many people disagree because they believe story doesn't matter, or that they're Spartan's so they don't need characterization. These always felt like cop outs to me. Thank you for bringing up moments in Reach that I didn't elaborate on.
Keep up the good work, Act Man!
The Act Man I agree with you all characters have their own story especially Kat here story barely getting ton know her then name she's gone just like that.
***** Ahahaha true that!
Act mans videos that are just talking about the campaign and the campaign alone have next to nothing for dislikes.
This video which is making a poor attempt to cover the whole game is about 30% dislikes and 70% likes. Clearly you sucked it up in this video. You should have given credit where it's due and spent less time hating on just about everything. You compliment the music, parts of btb, and parts of invasion. Everything else you pretty much hated on. A lot of your hate is easy to disagree with and in some cases just plain stupid.
I give this video a 3 out of 5. Your other halo videos are better. This one was pretty weak though.
The Act Man lol during this whole review I was thinking of how your analysis of reach was completely different.
I had so many good memories playing Reach. It was my favorite Halo hands down.
Narragetto Tru
Same so many good memories but too bad the halo now for whatever reason for me is not halo for me anymore
I quit playing console game, and now I join the PC master race
Ethanplayz 4784 not everyone dies Jun survives with Halsey
same
agree
"Boring. You don't feel like a badass. You just do what your commander tells you to do."
Congrats. You just realized that you're playing as a soldier.
DivineWarrior I was about to say that
Bartman that's the point, you're meant to be a spartan after all. If they wanted to do that Halo ODST would have been the perfect game for it.
Jimmy Walker Spartans are soldiers...
Spartans are soldiers, no ifs, whats or buts about it. They do NOT just do what they want. They all follow the chain of command. Clearly you have no knowledge of how Military command structure works.
Spartan III's were made to be cannon fodder along with the 4th Gen, they are nowhere compared to spartan II's like Jorge.
Well no shit this game can't be about winning, its about the fall of reach bro. "From the beginning, you know how it ends"
And even then there are some nice surprises along the way. Your sacrifice means Jun lives, Halsey lives, Cortana lives, Keys lives, MC lives, tons of innocent humans live, and the alien assholes get their teeth knocked in. It's about going down fighting and having it mean something in the long run. What's not to be admired and moved emotionally about that?
Even if you think that noble teams efforts were pointless... You still have to admire that they put up one hell of a fight and never gave up.
Perfectly embodies what Halo Reach is. And why I adore that game/story so much. Even though the characters themselves were a bit lacking.
That's not even the point he's making.
Vex they won’t understand that
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 "What's not to be admired and moved emotionally about that?"
Real hard for me to get infested and moved when it's a _prequel_ and there's no tension because we know what's going to happen. Of course Keys, MC and others live, they need to for the rest of the franchise to happen. It's the classic prequel problem that effects prequels in all media. None of these actions have weight because we know that no matter what happens in the story, things will eventually go as they do in future installments.
"What Bungie has done is made a story about a squad that's unable to prevent disaster" THAT'S THE POINT OF REACH... IT'S A PREQUEL!
letsherptothederp except they spend 90% of the campaign trying to prevent disaster and make the player care when they know it'll fail.
The Looinrims The point was to protect and help evacuate civilians, and to get valuable assets off reach.That is literally the point of the game.
All you halo 3 fan boys think everything needs to be a decisive master chief fucking victory in reality you have losses and consequences.
aaron ponton point of 3 missions, and the 'valuable assets', as stated in the video, are only there to connect with CE storywise
aaron ponton no, not 'all halo 3 fanboys blah blah blah' it's just we see a good campaign with a good set of missions that interconnect, and then we see reach which feels like they accidentally deleted all the cutscenes and stuff with all that worthless story content like character development, theme, emotion, etc
aaron ponton I think the point was that you are still a spartan in reach. The other Halo games have you play the chief and have these insane victories, and it makes sense. In Reach, the gameplay still has you feeling like a tank while you are in a hopeless situation. It's a dissonance that can't be fixed and makes the tone of the game fall flat(for me at least).
Reach was my favorite, I have had so many good memories in it with friends I just can't hate it. I still play it to this day and will continue playing it until the servers shut down.
TheSentientToast 1 Dude Same, GrifBall, Living Dead, Custom Games, I'm Not A Serious Player.
And Your Point Is? Living dead and Big Team Battle, that's where it was at.
Best multiplayer ever, worst campaign though :/
+HauntedPropaneT it has my favorite campaign
H3 forever , That ending was epic as fuck.
A lot like Lasky's line in Halo 4 how he became captain, for me Halo Reach's most memorable line was on Nightfall, the local militia had 3 big cases marked UNSC.
Jun says "So you took these weapons from the local base?"
Militia Man "What you gonna arrest us?"
Jun "No, we're gonna steal it back."
*Mic Drop*
This game isn't about being badass it's realizing that humanity is up against an enemy that they stand no chance in beating. Evacuating civilians and getting Intel of the covenant was the ONLY objective on reach. The point of the campaign is to show you how futile your efforts are in the grand scale of this one sided war. You aren't meant to win in this game... Period
I think the video missed the point of the entire game.
Ratio Tile Then you are lost!!!
ThatKidMo16 exactly thank you
SirBaconbits - TheGamingBacon game has faults just not the story
Except, it doesn't really sell any of those points. It's really hard to care about anything thats going on when none of it has any character (or barely any). The player isn't given much reason to give a shit about reach or most of noble team.
It's real basic storytelling, which the campaign seriously lacks. You need character, pacing, and a compelling setting. If none of those things are fleshed out, then it becomes really hard to care about what's going on. That's the campaign's biggest fault, which was explained in the video.
Yeah idk reach is still my favorite campaign, I think you're underplaying a lot of its strengths like cinematography and gameplay, and yeah the characters aren't thoroughly fleshed out but I just don't think it's suppose to be a character driven story, it's more about reach then it is about noble team
salzburysteak I agree reach is my favorite campaign too
definitely the best campaign of halo. I've never been so emotionally tied to characters that i have so little interactions mechanically with. my heart broke when Kat died :'(
Well said. The halo lore and story has always been pretty flawed compared to many sci fi stories out there so I don't give a shit. I don't play halo for the story so much as I do for the game play, coop, multiplayer, forge etc etc...
And man oh man does Reach offer a campaign of alien ass kicking. Not one single level in Reach is a massive bore or frustration. No library or repeat missions like in halo 1. No arbiter missions like in halo 2. No cortana like mission like in halo 3. No boring as fuck missions like in halo 4 and 5. Every mission of Reach offers what halo combat is all about.
Fully agree with thread.
He's biased toward halo 2, which is why he thinks this is so bad
Honestly, Reach was my favorite Halo game. It was also my intro to the franchise, so of course I'm gonna be naturally defensive about it. I was really on the fence about continuing to watch the video in the first few minutes, but holy shit did you win me over. That part minutes in where you talk about 'what if the opening segment had been done in reverse' is a genius analysis. Liked and faved.
yup and still is, WE NEED TO KEEP IT ALIVE PPL
Reach pretty much had the best Halo sandbox of modes, vehicles, weapons, and enemies to date.
To me, Reach is the ultimate representation of the Human-Covenant war and the original trilogy of games.
Rhas 'Churol thats the second time i run into... Its getting scary.
MnM
I am everywhere. :D
*****
I've had people recognize me in completely different places, too.
I respect your output man but I have the feeling you might've had the nostalgia goggles on when you made this. I felt as if you compared this to Halo 2 and Halo 3 more so then you have with the previous videos. To this day I've put in hundreds of hours onto Reach through the last six years and I still hold it as the best game in the series, I've played every game since 2002 when I finally got an Xbox.
Half the time I spent was Multiplayer on Invasion and the other half was on Custom games with my best friends. Reach on my old Xbox took up 80GBs of space with all the custom maps and game modes we downloaded or made up. That's alot for just a 120GB HDD and all of that was just Forge content. I love this game and I have it on my bookshelf so I won't lose it or forget the good times. Reach has been one of the best games I've ever played.
I feel the same way. It's my most played game...
Lucas here makes some good points. Like how the game wasn't taken as seriously on a competitive level compared to halo 2 and 3. Or how armor abilities came to be. He's right about that although some arguments can be made about those topics...
But a lot of stuff he says is just plain stupid...
The spartans reactions make sense because they have gone up against the covies before. They are super soldiers with genetic alterations trained to keep their kool and kick some ass at a super human level. Why would they freak out like 16 year old girls? It makes sense that they would remain fairly calm and control the situations of combat.
The game is about soldiers fighting off waves of enemy aliens...
Fire fight is a mode about soldiers fighting off waves of enemy aliens...
How again does fire fight not fit into the game????
He says invasion is the best part of the game. Really Lucas? That's kind of hard for me to take your word on when you yourself have only played 30 matches of invasion mean while you have played modes in the competitive playlists about 25x times more than you do invasion... Man of your word much? I don't think so...
LordHeebrial Wow! Same here! I remember how excited I was way in 2010 when I was launching games on BTB, Infection, team slayers or one of my favorite modes, Invasion! Last game I played and I had this kind of same feeling it was the game Ark Survival Evolved
But still Halo Reach has been the best game for me!
the Feels....
agree i fucking love this game i miss the old days
Can we Ditch 343 already?
I mean, How the fuck do you Ruin Halo like this?
"We wanna be fully independent!"
**joins with Activision gets their company restructured**
*realizes it was the worst choice in history and pulls out, saving their franchise*
“So yeah we played ourselves”
lol they took 100 million from a chinese publisher after breaking away from activision
"saving their franchise" lol not at all
we'll never get another good halo ;-; they even ruined the PC port!
@@slaughterround643 pc ports are good
Really loved Reach. Loved all of them... They were good times.
Indeed they were!
same here i miss the good old days
:( :/
reach was the best ever.
3 or Reach :)
I actually like the Armor abilities.
It adds strategies to the game you wouldn't normally encounter. Sneaking away when losing in a combat situation, taking some by surprise, rushing someone when reloading, and then the other way around. Maybe you notice a certain player use a certain strategy alot, and have to plan around it. Maybe the enemy notices this for you, and you change the ability to surprise them. All around fun to strategize about.
I agree. And even if you don't like AA... You can play a playlist where the armor abilities are disabled soooo yeah...
Yea he says that the armour abilities take skill out of the game. If he played multiplayer properly then he would see that some people could use the abilities in creative ways.
ABOVE YOUR PAY GRADE But it killed the series you dope...
We're entitled to our own opinions thank you. I don't need some self proclaimed expert to tell me what I like and don't like. Just because your bio brags about you playing Halo for a while doesn't mean you can say "it's above your pay grade" lol.
"I agree. And even if you don't like AA... You can play a playlist where the armor abilities are disabled soooo yeah..." No competitive player would agree that armor abilities "add strategy to the game". They shorten the skill gap the same way bloom did. Though, you're right they had playlists without these annoyances, they should've made Armor Abilities more like power weapons. And with Armor lock starting out being like the title update version, where the more damage you deal to it, the less it lasts(and not basically a pause button).
The Armor Abiliites were balanced and added in the fourth element of strategy which made me love the game. Brutes had a lore reason why they were "weak" in Reach. Reach was more of a hopeless endeavor, meaning the hardcore Halo fans those who have read the books and studied Halo thoroughly knew the outcome of Reach, but we didnt expect it to be a long drawn out narrative where Spartans fought to their last breath to save the remnants of the UNSC on Reach, we experienced the Lone Wolf being the major player to end the war that had devastated the entire UNSC. That is what made the campaign, its many missions that you called out were meant as a sort of recon missions, going in to tear the Covenant's supply lines instead of a straight forward assault until the UNSC was able to do so. In Reach you werent some big Spartan like Master Chief, but you werent a helpless ODST either. You were a mix of the two, the Spartan III's were meant to be expendable, and that is what the game showed off.
Altogether Reach is my second favorite Halo game, right after 3, as i spent almost as many hours on Reach as i did 3, i spent many hours forging, many other hours playing match after match having tons of fun and all around loving every minute of it. The many who hate on the game, give it undeserved hate and fall into the category of wanting a "Halo 2 or Halo 3 re-do" in Halo Reach, the game was made to tell a story, bring the story in full circle, while also showing another side of Halo we dont usually see, the expendable Spartans. The ones that Master Chief stood out on, Chief was THE SPARTAN every looked up to as he was the best of the best in the UNSC. We were shown the lesser known Spartans, the ones who worked right alongside the Marines and Army, on a world we had only heard about. Reach was Bungie's final hoorah, and they went out in a bang. Creating a game that brought everything we love about Halo together. They kept Halo from falling under.
Hopefully you do a Halo 4 video soon as i desperately wanna see your output on that lol
I'm currently gathering footage of Halo 4 for my next video.
Raycevick Great videos though, i love these things. Constructive criticism makes the game feel alive and different.
Mackenzie Braden operation torch and burn brother
undamaged sum What?
Mackenzie Braden well said
the Soundtrack still gives me chills
@Dr. Loomis Perhaps he means chili's?
Lol quit clowning on him fellas. 😂
He meant this 11:30
I know it doesn't excuse it, but part of the reason Noble Team lacks personality is probably because they're Spartans. The "I'm a badass" gameplay contrasts the "You 'lose'" in the end wasn't necessarily bad, because the game assumes that you know Reach falls and what not. Good vid though.
Thanks, and yeah, I don't think that excuses it haha. I think there was an opportunity to contrast the gameplay with the story, but due to no surprises in said story, its hard to feel that sense of dread. You can't feel hopelessness if you didn't have hope earlier.
Part of the reason Noble team ;acled personality was comprised of spartan 2s. So because they were kidnapped at a certain age and started combat with no knowledge of what its like to feel emotion or passion and with the physcological effects of war will only amplify and harden that effect. Think nothing, feel nothing.
I thought Jorge was the only Spartan 2 in the team?
No he was not, all of Noble team were spartan 2s
Halopedia says otherwise. "Carter-A259 was a SPARTAN-III commando"
This is my favourite game! The forge and custom games were SO GOOD!
who left more time in story than in forgeworld? no one, reach is great because of many options for the games.
Reach is probably my most played game ever and it will always be my 2nd favorite game to halo CE =D
Halo 5 forge and custom games are better.
I see you are responding to every comment licking Halo 5 ass, but tell me. did you ever play any Halo from the original trilogy?
No he is a kid
Dude...why are you hating on Reach so much? I will not say its perfect, but it is one of the best Halo games since it has the best feeling of war in it. The whole point of Reach is you are fighting a battle you know you've already lost which is shown perfectly in the levels Exodus and Alexandria. The last level takes regular horde mode and completely upgrades it, you feel completely hopeless as just endless waves of Covenant pile through you. It is just Reach and I love it
everyone has different opinions
I'm sure he loves this game but when it comes to games you critique the games you love, you show your passion.
I'm sure he loves this game but when it comes to games you critique the games you love, you show your passion.
right on
Bungie had always put enjoyment before cool stuff. In Reach, I'm not having much fun when I'm just constantly shooting the same infantry over and over but with different weapons. The Package is the only mission where there's vehicle focus, but it's short lived and involves you just sitting around and waiting for the fuel rod shade turret to not shoot at you. Even New Alexandria doesn't have much vehicle focus. Banshees aren't focused and the shade turrets are easy as shit to take out.
But that's the thing. I can still enjoy a game if I dislike certain parts of it. I'm still playing Reach right now (albeit, mostly multiplayer), and it's fun as shit. I just wish the campaign had more to it.
Gonna be honest here. I'd normally be the first person to say that they don't like Reach all that much, and honestly I don't. Especially in comparison to earlier Halo games... but this video I found to be pretty overly critical and exaggerated. Even for my Halo Reach opinions. It shouldn't be titled "Halo: Reach... 6 years later" It should be titled "Everything I could find wrong with Halo: Reach". Yah, it touches a few times on "good aspects", but they're so far in between, and each positive is usually met with a "but" with a negative immediately discrediting or invalidating it. Again, definitely not a Reach fanboy. There's more I don't like than I do about it a lot of times, but this.. this seems heavily riddled with "things I could find to say bad" about it.
Of course, everything is opinion, and mileage may vary.
Bruh u should do ur take on reach
Yeah I was expecting him to talk about game mechanics and how amazing the story holds up and its theme but hes just ripping his pants off and unloading onto this thing.
@@cryojudgement2376 You need to learn to stop taking criticisms of things you like personally.
It's pretty clear that you are a fanboy if you can't handle someone criticizing it.
@@aolson1111 haven’t seen this in a while but If I remember right he said he hated the music, the gameplay, and the story. When each is just as good as any other halo game if not better.
What do you mean there were no massive blow-up bits in Reach? What about the Corvette? What about at the end of the first mission?
Lucas didn't play the same game we did apparently...
WHAT ABOUT THE GODDAMN ENDING?
KOONGLE exactly six stayed knowing he will die so humanity will have a chance if that is not halo then when many marines died giving time for everyone else then what is?
Well said Devin. A big part of what makes the halo story admirable is because of it's heroic characters are so willing to sacrifice themselves to save the people they love and are trying to protect. It's heroic. How is that not a massive blow-up in story telling? A character dying while being heroic is boring now?
But that's cutscene, not gameplay.
It's been 6 years?!
Feels like i was making race tracks and playing custom infected maps just yesterday
JayWePe lets be honest, you probably did play this yesterday. Great game.
I miss the game tbh
Only 6 years? That's not ba-
"5 years ago" ...oh
It’s been 12 now
Thanks for the comments everyone! Already capturing footage of Halo 4!
What Halo 4? Never heard of it. It wasn't made.
***** No, wasn't, nope, not, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.................
nope
The characters were definitely stereotypical in many ways-- not to say you couldn't connect with them-- but Reach had an **incredible** atmosphere, beginning with the first cutscene.
That feeling of hopelessness, it's nice to see a halo game take it on so successfully.
excited to see Halo 4's vid. I have a strongly negative opinion towards it opposed to most halo games. however I do find myself on the multiplayer still today.
fuck gaylo 4
This isn’t “Halo: Reach... 6 Years Later”, it’s “Everything I can Find Wrong With Halo:Reach”
You must hate anyone who criticizes something you like.
@@theincrediblefella7984 most of the points the guy makes in the video are decent but he presents the video like an analysis or review which is retarded bcs all he did was look at the negatives. So he doesn’t hate the video because of the contents of the criticism but more rly that the video is pretty much only criticism
@@weenman221 Did you really just try and say the video is bad because it's only criticisms? You must get suicidal when you see a video dunking on something you like, don't you?
@@theincrediblefella7984 ok i admit i mispoke there what i meant was that though most of his criticisms are valid its not a proper review of the game as he doesnt touch on many aspects of how the game is also good. Im just saying that his video is presented as a review of the full game when hes clearly just picking out the negatives.
@@weenman221 I would agree if he didnt also point out the things he enjoyed about the game, or pointed out what it does well.
Bungie wanted to be independent but sold there soul to the gaming devil called Activation.
Who is still confused with this?
Tim van der Beek that's what I was thinking lol. Shame bungie left halo, only to make that money fest of a game destiny.
its weird right, next thing you know they will sign up with EA.
agreed, Activision isn't exactly lenient with what they want the developer to deliver. I stand by my opinion that Bungie should have tried to go with Take-Two Interactive as from games they've published it seems that they allow a lot more freedom to the developers
JOLTLORD Yeah EA is very greedy when it comes to season passes and rushing games.
But Activision just feels worse.
They rehash games over and over with season passes and micro transactions.
Publish mediocre or bad cash grabs and shut down the studios who made it.
Or in destiny's case, ruin the development and get rid of problematic employees.
+A most excellent dude who is totally not bogus! Yeah I think Bungie now is just a former shell of themselves so my story of halo ended with 3. dont care what happens to halo here on out.
Reach was my Favorite Halo.
I never saw these flaws when I played this game.
Because you went in to it to enjoy it, not pick out things like "There aren't tough enemies on normal difficulty".
This video doesn't even point out how Heroic and Legendary added way more elites such as the jump jet rangers with needle rifles who were actually quite deadly.
Druark if you play halo alone not in legendary then you are a noob and should not say if the game was good.
odst for example is a great single player halo game if you play legendary with skulls in the open world New Mombasa.
Mato Kuroi Okay, what are you even trying to say? Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? cause that is the most horrible 2 sentences ever.
If you're trying to be sarcastic, then you're missing my point entirely from my last comment. He complained about the game just having lots of cannon fodder enemies, at the low difficulties that's true because they're for the average joe not the people who play for a challenge. Hence why there are actually 4 difficulty levels.
All the footage I captured was from a playthrough I did on Heroic. Even on that difficulty, the game still throws in lots of cannon fodder (which include the Brutes). As I explain in the video, I believe this was done for balancing reasons. How you got the idea I was talking about normal difficulty is beyond me.
Too bad Bungie wasn't still making halo games, they did a better job than 343
Edwin Drake I agree completely. But the only reason that halo 5's multiplayer is good is because like every game nowadays they focus more on multiplayer and then the campaign sucks ass. Game devs are just a bunch of money hungry cunts now.
I thought Halo 4 and 5 were the worst of the Halo series. Just my opinion.
I didn't think they had the feel of what Halo is supposed to be. I feel like 343 is just catering to the 13 year old CoD lovers.
Ryan Harris Yeah 4 and 5 suck.
SuperSix4 I thought Reach wasn't bad, but wasn't all that good. Same with ODST. To this day 2 is the best.
i still like halo 4 and 5 but i feel like 5 is a childish game since it is T rated doesn't show blood or anything like it did with the old ones
I think your underplaying a lot of the elements while overplaying a lot of minor issues. Also reach came out before a lot of the tropes your complaining about became a major thing. Of course the team isn't going to just welcome you in with open arms and be all chatty, your the new guy in a tightly nit group of Spartans who already barely talk, plus their home world where they grew up is being destroyed. While there could have been some improvements I still think reach is an amazing game and what it accomplishes vastly outweigh the issues
TopHatPenguin you're basically defending weaker aspects of the writing that fail to achieve their stated aims. I love Reach but in this respect it could have been done better. You don't need characters to talk to show who they are, you just need them to do anything that demonstrates personality. Common things would be like a character seen handling a cross to show they're religious, having books in their quarters to show they're well read. Their reactions to things can be muted but nuanced, having one character be more blunt and another more philosophical for example. The little things that come from people reflecting that they're different from one another.
Reach's script attempts this, we see that Kat is the scary planner lady, Emile is the quiet tough guy, Jorge is compassionate etc. But we don't get to know them that well, a real sense of who they are as people. Other than generic leader, who is Carter? What is anything Jun likes or dislikes?
I don't find it disappointing, but it's worth acknowledging the these things can be done better. Silent movies and silent characters for decades and decades have conveyed complexity and feeling, it's not too much to ask for a 21st century videogame to possess some of that when one its own ambitions is to portray its protagonists as distinct, sympathetic human beings.
Actually none of the spartans 3s grew up on reach. They were all trained on the shield world Onyx. The only one with an emotional connection to reach was jorge.
+GhostSamurai Honestly, I think the game did its best given the amount of characters it had to introduced and the overall bleak narrative. For example, Jun's actions and attitude in the mission Nightfall serve to characterize him pretty well, unlike the rest of the missions where you are with Noble Team, in Nightfall Jun prefers to separate himself from the player suggesting the fact that he likes to be alone, he is quite chatty during the mission despite the fact that it's supposed to a covert operation, he cracks a joke when Kat suggests that direct action may be necessary, he jokes around with the militia when he tells them that they are going to steal back the weapons that they initially stole from the UNSC, he is genuinely amazed when he sees the Guta, and so on. With Carter we get a lot of characterization through his interaction with Kat in the cutscene at the beginning of Long Night of Solace, we see how much he grieves over Kat and how much he starts to resent the Covenant in The Package, and we get to see how much he cares about his team through his sacrifice in the Pillar of Autumn. Jorge's sacrifice also showed how much he loved his home planet, the way in which Emile goes out shows how fearless he is, and so on.
Honestly, whenever I hear people complain that Noble Team was "underdeveloped" I always think that they must not have been paying attention to not just what happens during the game's cutscenes, but also during the missions themselves (and to a certain degree this is understandable). Could it have been done better? Yes, but I think that could have only happened in a different settings and if the events in the game were different.
You have 117 likes
Ima leave it that way
you talk like Reach came out like three decades before it did. every character trope its taking is from something like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, etc etc. War movies have existed as long as movies have existed, and they even stole a lot of their tropes from precursor science fiction.
Its been 6 fucking years?
Ikr. feels like yesterday i swear.
justa9uy yessir, just gotta ignore it
this game was the goat
ThatGuyJay3 Ikr it feels like yesterday I was a little kid in 6th grade when the game came out. Played this so much With the best memories in my gaming career.
ThatGuyJay3 favourite part of reach was hands down squashing people with grids
Half of the criticisms were fair. I think the mention of armor abilities and the first half of the campaign being weak are true. However a lot of the other criticisms were over critical. The part about Noble team was ridiculous, they're far more fleshed out and interesting than previous Halo characters. Almost Everybody felt heavy emotions watching noble 6's death. it was iconic.
Noble Team is more fleshed out than previous Halo characters, but I'd argue that's not a very high standard to live up to. Noble 6's death is bound to be the most emotionally gripping since he/she is us. I do hope Halo games manage to create a great squad of characters someday, as its rare in gaming as a whole.
Zir S exactly this guy is obviously one of them guys that live in a shed and plays Cod all day
Raycevick is also full of shit balls. He says invasion is his favorite part of the game but his gamertag stats say he has hardly played it compared to other playlists. HMmmmmm...
Zir S I felt it hard when kat died and Emile and me
You obviously didn't watch his video. He said it was favorite part of the multiplayer upon revisit.
This was a really great in depth analysis of Reach, but it hasnt decreased my love for it at all. In my eyes, Reach is and always will be the best Halo game developed
***** Ive played all the Halo games apart from 5
***** In your opinion yes. In my opinion no. Likes and dislikes are relative. Lets not turn this into an argument. How about we just agree to disagree?
***** Now im starting to think that was a troll
Hes a preety good troll thought. Atleast better then the edgy Kids, he just needs a name that triggers people, like mine.
"What Bungie has done is made a story about a squad that is unable to prevent disaster" yeah because one squad of Spartan IIIs can stop an entire covenant invasion fleet! There were other Spartan III squads confirmed dead on Reach too. Maybe if it was 50 Spartan IIs they could've held out indefinitely but, what do you expect them to do? Go super saiyan? They are outnumbered, outgunned, and have inferior technology. The whole point of the Halo franchise is that humanity is fighting a losing war and might very well become extinct.
"Confirmed dead"
Don´t believe those lies, Spartans never die.
Einstien And Enfield n
EXACTLY
The spartan 2 squads on reach were largely wiped out as well, with few surviving. Master chief thought he may have been the last spartan 2 because of how devastating the battle was. There was no way the spartan could have won, even if every last spartan 2 and 3 was present because of covenant space superiority. A spartan 2 can’t do much when they’re being glassed.
@@punctuationman334 And six of them basically were. *By their own allies out of desperation.*
Halo Reach > Halo 4
Master Vidxad 58 Well no shit.
Bruh thats like saying 2+2=4
halo 1 2 3 odst>reach
gluby3owns 2+2=fish
Master Vidxad 58 other way around
"A handfull of enemies doing bugger all". Looks like somebody didnt play on ledgendary and get their ass pounded.
Harry Holt Or LASO for that matter
LASO is a real bitch lol. Did the final missions once on LASO with my bro in split screen coop. We were so frustrated lol. Took us about 2 hours to beat it.
I don't agree with many things in this video but i do lile the idea of the very first encounter with the covenant being more difficult. Even when playing on legendary, the first encounter is just jackals and grunts. If there were some elites in the beginning too, it would be more on the same difficulty scale of the rest of the game.
Yeah bro the head shot fodder gets so much harder on higher difficulties because more grunts spawn that you have to shoot in the head twice ooooooooo
I remember finishing this game on legendary and feeling so accomplished! parents called me for dinner, I knicked my Xbox and it destroyed the disc and never played it again. I imagine if I went to dinner on their first call I would have done the same thing except ON THE LAST MISSION then maybe kms later. R.I.P reach :')
lol hilarious story. I was playing halo 3 and was about to beat the game and my cheap ass shit controllers rubber on the thumb stick fell off. I was playing on hard pointy plastic stubs jabbing into my left thumb. It fuckin hurt and made it hard to aim but I beat the game anyways because it was that bad ass lol. Still is : )
I do not understand your reasoning for saying that Reach having firefight doesn't make sense.
"Gears of wars is a game where you're a lumbering soldier with high damage weapons. A Wave defense gamemode makes sense."
"Halo Reach is a game where you're a super soldier clad in power armor with the ability to save the human race. A Wave Defense mode makes no sense."
UHM, I do not follow.
Because if anything, it makes more sense for Reach to have one since you are trying to save a world from an ALIEN INVASION.
Please, please reply to this explaining more. I love your videos, I do. But I really need this explained. Because this isn't passing my think test.
He's commenting on gameplay. Saving the world from an alien invasion has nothing to do with gameplay.
+ion bing The person who made this video was seemingly unaware that back when Reach was launched there were plenty of Firefight variants that focused on survival instead of high scores. As Reach features the most deadly iteration of the Covenant in the entire franchise (with the exception of the wildly unbalanced Halo 2), a wave defense mode make perfect sense and there is a very good reason why the Halo community loved it.
Plus you can make the game mode as difficult as you want through tweaking numerous settings and then play with your friends, just like the reviewer acknowledged, so I still don't see the point of his argument.
Gameplay is what he was talking about. Halo is fun when aggressiveness is part of the fight. Each squad of covenant is like a little, fast paced puzzle. When you are playing defensively, you have your positioning already, weapons are supplied to you before a fight, and covenant attack in a predictable manner. Also, you’re a spartan, long term consequences are minimal compared to ODST’s, melee is far more viable, and your speed is increased. Customization be damned, it never feels like the covenant can push you back or corner you. That’s baked into the games design, lowering Heath or other options can’t resolve it. Reason is because it works so well in campaign. The covenant may not be super deadly in this game, even on legendary since they all fold to the DMR, and elites to the PP and DMR. But positioning and movement makes fights interesting and fun, taking that out makes the game a bit more boring, since the responsibility of a aggressive push is now the responsibility of the AI, and they are not nearly smart enough to employ tactics during that. Firefight can be mindless fun on reach, but a lot of what makes campaign fun is removed, it really doesn’t help that the maps mostly don’t feel designed for the mode, because in large part, they are designed for something else.
Also, not many people were playing firefight, at least not publicly. Many of the firefight playlists were getting 200 people at most, while slayer was getting around 15000. This was a few months after launch if I remember correctly.
Agent Louisiana.
Yeah I couldn’t see his point of view on that one. To me, being a super soldier makes MORE sense to have a defensive mode against enemy waves. You’re basically holding out as long as you can to defend an alien invasion! Taking on overwhelming odds makes more sense because you have the capacity to do so, being a super soldier and all.....like the covenant are throwing all their forces at you because you’re such a threat. One moment he’s complaining you don’t feel like a badass, and the next, you feel ‘too powerful’ in firefight. He’s very contradictory
I don't understand what game this guy played but Halo Reach is easily one of the best games I have ever played.
Who here loves halo reach?
Dino MLG me
I loved reach but ODST had the most immersion in the campaign than any other halo thoooo
Its a great game. But i still agree with a lot of this review.
Me! Give this guy a good dislike.
Reach Was My 1st Halo
aww cmon halo reach is my alltime fav game
I know, but firefight was decent
the best game
Hell yeah I just picked it up again. Can you believe Microsoft charges $49.95 for Reach when you can pick it up for like $7 from a bargain bin? Reach is 100x better than Destiny.
[Anonymous] Retro I loved reach I feel once bungee switched over they instantly started falling apart story wise...I mean the multi-player was cool but once they hit halo 5....dead specailly since couch coop is gone I relied on this game to always give me and my friends coop but yeah nope these days all that matters is money not how we all feel
[Anonymous] Retro why does this guy's opinion matte to you? He's not your parent or something
You're wrong, Halo Reach 6 years later is just inheritors poisoning grifball.
Why do they do that? It's not fun for anyone
Whats the point of grifball when you have max rank? You are just wasting your time.
Welcome to the best micro community In gaming
You had great points but I feel like this is a “late review” of Halo Reach rather than “hey here’s what the game looks like now” kinda thing
As much as I like your analysis in this series I feel like this video in particular is the most biased towards the original trilogy. Especially the comment about firefight.
They tried to inject variety into an already tired franchise that even the fanbase thought hit it's peak several years before. And I feel like your complaint is related too strongly to the original games and not particularly objective towards how it works with this game specifically.
Personally I think Firefight was best in Reach largely due to customization and it's much more frantic and arcadey nature compared to ODST where it in general lacked a lot of variety. The amount of customization ranging from the different game modes to countless amounts of custom gamemodes made it a real treat to play. Especially since you could play Firefight competitively if you wanted, a player could play on the side of the covenant.
Customization was something that I felt the game did really well and since I mostly play campaign/firefight as opposed to competitive I really enjoyed. It's one reason I'm disappointed in Halo 4/5 not attempting the same thing and just reusing the master chief over and over for the campaign.
Personally I think MLG is the worst part of the Halo community and 343 catering to it I think has resulted in the games getting worse over time.
While I don't think Reach is a perfect game I really don't think it's as bad as you've made out in this video. Especially compared to the 343 developed games.
Very well said my friend! Couldn't agree more. You hit the nail on the head.
"These enemies were strong opponents in the last 2 game" (referring to brutes), my ass, they were a joke in Halo 3.
Ikr
Everything is a Joke when you have the almighty noob combo. But what he means is you dont even need that, you just pop off their helmet and win.
Geralt of Rivia yeah thats true but the moment you put the game on heroic you kinda gotta work for it to kill them.
The Brutes in Halo 3 on Heroic and Legendary were pretty tough. Chieftains were way more dangerous then Elites with energy swords.
***** You guys seem to missing the point, they were still even simpler to kill in Reach, if you compare a brute with a shield in 3+ to a brute with a helmet in reach.
On legendary a Brute will stilll die in a few head shots on reach whilst the shield will supplement more than 3 times the amount of head shots
Its like all the people saying God of War 4s dumbed down combat is fine because GoW1-3's combat wasn't particularly in-depth either.
Just because the old stuff was easy doesn't mean the new stuff being even easier, is justifiable. In fact, its a problem because they should have done the opposite to compensate for that.
This guy is overly-critical and misses the entire point of Reach's story. Its not a character-driven story, its setting-driven. The fact that Noble team isn't fleshed out is the entire point- the campaign is a narrative characterized by the desperate state of the Human-Covenant war. You are a Spartan, the finest class of warrior that Humanity has, and yet there is barely anything you can do; the Covenant wipe out the greatest UNSC stronghold within days. Reach paints the picture of what the war was like before the discovery of Halo and the turning of the tide- Humanity is fighting the long defeat, with extinction drawing closer each day. Self-sacrifice is the key theme here. Only through self-sacrifice could your Spartan buy humanity the time it needed to gain an advantage (forerunner tech) and fight harder.
Well said, that's why it's one of my favourite campaigns in the halo series. As for the game, I can't believe COG actually tried to put the hammer down on firefight. I remember it was the coolest mode to play with my mates back in the day, with a bunch of downloadable maps, including installation 04.
Well said both of you. Don't forget being able to customize fire fight in great detail!
As for the story... Something I hear haters say is that noble team wasn't well developed but isn't that kind of the point? The story is about a planet going to shit from a alien invasion and soldiers fighting to their last breath. There isn't time to sit down and drink a beer with them to get to know who they are. The story is about war... And war is depressing as fuck. You're not going to get a chance to get inside the heads of the characters 100% like in a final fantasy game or something lol.
Also... You never got to truly know Master chief in halo 1-3 unless you dive into books and shit. Those games didn't talk about his child hood and personality all that much either. Where were you Halo Reach haters back then??? These people right? Hilarious...
Even if it is setting driven they do a shit job of making reach an interesting place. They do little to make it feel like a fleshed out world. Sure you see some wildlife in the first mission, but that’s about it. Generic is probably the best word to describe this game
The Master Grief Collection if you like characters their death will hit you harder, your “war is depressing as fuck” is not an excuse to make a boring planet with even more boring characters
Jard also they don't have time to chat and fuck around with you in the campaign, reach is being invaded. It's all about being in a war that your trying so desperately to win but cannot
reach was easily the best game out of the franchise
Phil Thomas For me I really love halo 2
I came down to say this Petr Patz, Halo Reach and Halo 2 are my favourites with Halo 3 soooo close behind. (Literally just for the last mission honestly.)
*maybe* the campaign. multiplayer was shit.
The Mastur Ch33f if you were *into* clans or custom gaming maybe. My beef was with the mechanics and inconsistency.
seriously listening to this guy its like "i wasn't made to be the invincible hero this game was crap!" the whole way through.
Halo Reach was amazing. The music, the characters and the gameplay was all amazing. It was something different but still Halo at it's core. Halo 4 tried this and felt too different and lost the fans.
Jeremy Puflett stfu reach was perfect 💯💯
***** It has it's faults but to me everything was nice. I mean I'm not sure what else to expect from a Halo Game. The character development and enemy design could have been better but overall I really enjoyed the game and was able to replay it with no problems.
Halo 4 just took the unpopular elements of Reach, and took them to a another level. Proof that 343i never listened to the fans.
Actually Reach was just about as popular as halo 3. What unpopular elements of Reach are you talking about? Most halo players love Reach. You need to stop listening to the very vocal but small minority of bitchy halo players.
You forgot about the best part of the game. Living Dead.
Ben Schneider Until 343 butchered it with Alpha Zombies
Theicemanleaveth idk I liked alpha zombies.
ewwww that's the most disgusting playlist!!
invasion and rumble pit ftw!!
Enclave Officer
living dead is gross. k/d whores only play as survivors, and if they die too much as zombies they rage quit. it's plagued with scrubs.
No memorable quotes? My dude here is literally one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite characters. Guess who it’s from:
“I’m ready! How ‘bout you?!
Tbh every line of dialogue in reach is quotable
“Tell them to make it count”
"May I?"
"Don't cut ya self."
Hello Craig
"The big man was always sentimental"
Still better than halo 4.
bull shit, you should have said 5, cause that was trash
5 wasn't trash, but it was a big letdown, like a balloon, it was blown up big, ley it fly around and everybody payed attention to it for a while, but eventually conversation died down about except for the few people still thinking about using that balloon.
I liked 4 multiplayer but campaign was weak. I got the halo 5 system and that I really do not like.
Its hard to compare since it was made by a different studio. Reach was better but I enjoyed Halo 4
KaiserChiefs They are both bad. I just didn't waste my money and time on 5.
Fuck is he talking bout. Halo Reach was a good ass game. Good story, good gameplay, and the online scene was LIT! wish i could go back to them days
"halo reach in its whole is a good game" direct quote
Vashtheultimate Yeah, but that doesn't excuse that he was trashing it with insane bias for 27 minutes beforehand. He's saying it's good after all to avoid hate, and it's childish. He should have stuck to his guns and just stated that he didn't like the game.
Trevor Meme why must we even excuse somebody's subjective review of something?
Timquan Shabazz Muhammad for real man
totally agree 100% brotha. I miss playing online with friends and fucking around in forge ://
What difficulty does he play these on? Play it on heroic or legendary whole different game.
I played on Heroic for the video, and it's not a whole different game.
Raycevick Entirely different classes of enemies spawn based on your diffuculty. Easy and heroic are completely different and legendary is a whole different ball game.
None of which change inherit problems with the amount of cannon fodder to compensate for game balance and one-button save me from X situation abilities.
Raycevick I've played this campaign on legendary. i can tell you that armour abilities do not guarantee an easy victory. Armor lock next to hunters or any elite ranked ultra or above and the moment you come out you are dead. On easy and normal armor abilities are designed that way for Halo players who are just playing to have fun. There are a lot of moments with cannon fodder I agree but there are many moments that make up for that. For example the four ultras of the apocalypse on the space mission.
I didn't say in the video that they make the game easier, I said they make the game less interesting to play because abilities lower the number of decisions to make on the fly. There are too many situations where you either use them to save your life (even if only for a brief time) or you just die. They don't add to the sandbox and in many cases, take away from it as in the case of the drop shield which makes the health system entirely useless. Every video I make on the Halo series is done with a heroic playthrough, and there's never been an issue with tension until Reach. By the way, I appreciate your articulated comments. Far too many people that bring up this subject just spew cliche git gud exhortations.
At 13:10- Raycevick, that’s the point of Reach
Reach is the best game I've ever played and the best of the franchise without a single doubt.
Friendly Engineer yes bro i remember selling everything just to buy that game!
Friendly Engineer It’s a great game! But I think the “best Halo ever” is Halo 3.
+Ford Fan01 bro but you gotta admit reach gameplay is smoother
fjkzd J. Define what you mean by “smoother”
Ford Fan01 Halo 3 sucked ass
I honestly think that the Epilogue is one of the better moments in any Halo Campaign. The music, the damage, just the idea enthralls me every time.
Haha dude I can't believe my forge map for invasion is in this video, small world.
Really? Which one?
26:27 Frigate V19
I loved that map back in the day man! Reach was the golden age of forge.
Haha, that clip was from an old gameplay montage I made a few months after the game's launch. Me and a group of friends played it in a packed custom lobby. Good times.
I wish that Invasion still had decent numbers
i wish this game was on pc
It should be in a few years. on a Emulator
Boy do I have a surprise for you, three year younger version of Cliche
Boi do I have news for u mcc is gonna have reach and it will come out on pc
This is beautiful
I really hope cliché sees this
This game may have have had some missed opportunities, but then again, is there a Halo game that did not?
Good point. No game is perfect... You can find great things in the worst games and bad things in the best games...
Soyborne. Born, made, and undone by the soy. Obviously. No need to state the obvious. ‘Perfect’ by most people’s definitions/people with common sense, = as good as can reasonably be.
Halo: Combat Evolved didn’t, imo.
@@TheJayson8899 *Some more varied level design, especially beyond the exact same rooms and halls being spammed forty times across multiple missions, would have been nice for my sanity.*
I've been playing halo since I was 5 and 10 years later im still loving the Pre 343 games, halo 4 was good but halo 5 is just... Not the same
Joel Kelvin yeah it changed to much it feels like its made to be a fast paced copetitive pvp game witch is not what i like halo to be
having played halo 5 forge on pc it seems fine to me. Is there something I'm missing that changes the game significantly?
Brendan Forish for old halo players yes the guns sighrs were changed the button to aim was moved to the left trigger making it fell more needed to aim the movement feels like a parkor game almost and new guns and vechicles made it a prettymuch new game that has spartans in it
As seeing you have only played it on PC and the Forge nonetheless, it has alot of changes that just make it so far out there its not the same game.
Mackenzie Braden It has custom games. Ive played many matched that represent multiplayer. It feels sounds and looks like halo.
Having watched some of your other content (and subbed as a result) this one comes off as...needlessly petty and jaded.
Kinda like you're being less charitable and purposefully, well, mean to appeal to a perceived audience.
I felt the same way... This is like by far his worst halo video lol.
Yeah, the rest of his contents great, in this one he misses the point of the campaign big time. Agree with him about multiolayer thpugh.
Yeah, this is a huge contrast to his halo 4 video where he felt like he was being overly apologetic by constantly saying “Well these are problems, but nothing that the other games had as well”
I agree, but at least he's not directly misrepresenting the game like he did with ODST such as when he claimed that Sadie's story doesn't tie back into the main plot of the game despite her father's actions being directly tied to why the ODST quad was diverted away from the super carrier in the first place which you only find out in the later discovered audio logs. I do think he misrepresented the story and characters of this game when he basically said they were weak, but that could be subjective even if I have literally no idea how someone could subjectively come to that conclusion about Rach of all games.
That all being said, I think that @COGconnected here is just overdoing it on the detail of his negative opinions, and not that he holds more negative opinions than the other. This can often make people think the critic is putting forth too many negative comments, when in reality it's just an increase to run-time of negative comments while providing a more balanced total count of negative to positive. Anyway, if OP wants to avoid creating this kind of disconnect in the future, he could give better context by pointing out with each criticism how small it actually is to the game as a whole more often, like he did when he pointed out how many hours he's put into the game.
To be honest I love halo 3 ODST and reach. ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEIR SOUND TRACKS
halo reach is still my all time favorite, especially the artstyle but it's definitely true that the campaign is an utter letdown though. bungie can do many things, but they can never engage in an innovative and interesting way. all their characters are always bland.
but man, I never had and issue with circular maps. they were great.
naw man the music is amazing
Hazztech the art style was one the main reasons why I didn't like Halo Reach
TheCracka85 whaaaat? why?
same I love the gritty art style
Extreme Cynic Halo 3's armor is good too, to be fair.
"as neutral and objective as I try to be in these videos"
@Geralt of Trivia you just summed up this entire comment section. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing.
@Geralt of Trivia Well he IS objectively wrong on just about all of his points, so there's that.
@Geralt of Trivia It's not "extremism", it's just a fact. Your denial of said fact makes you ironically just like the prophets.
Geralt of Trivia lol. True.
@Geralt of Trivia Compare how many things he defended, justified, or praised in his other Halo videos to how much he seemed to actively avoid complimenting in this one. In fact, try to count the amount of positives he mentioned that he didn’t promptly undermine. His bias was impossible to hide here. He wasn’t even wrong about a lot of the things he said, there were just so many things he _didn’t_ say that he’d probably be willing to mention in his other retrospectives. Overall, he was just way less forgiving with this game for no apparent reason beyond his personal feelings for it. Which is contradictory to what the OP quoted from him. Then you stroll in and blindly assume the OP meant he was objectively wrong without even _considering_ the idea that he *just wasn’t objective.*
I can completly understand ur points and respect ur opinion... That said, reach is still my fav halo game yet.
I don't. He makes good points but also retarded points lol.
He's right about how armor abilities game to be and how the game launched poorly in the eyes of competitive players until more competitive based features were added to the game later.
Everything else though is either debatable or just plain stupid... Especially his take on fire fight. He thinks it shouldn't be in the game...
Fire fight is about soldiers fighting off waves of aliens...
The game is about soldiers fighting off waves of aliens...
How does fire fight not fit into this game again? LOL!
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 because some of the least fun parts of the halo games are defense portions. The library, the beginning of outskirts, etc. The games are more fun when youre pushing to an objective and killing aliens. I dont completely agree that it shouldnt be in the game. But i definitely get where its coming from.
I can't believe it has been six years since this game was release. I feel old now.
ikr tell me about it
I remember making my mom take me to gamestop at midnight for both ODST and Reach. I feel quite old.
Imagine what it feels like to realize it's been almost 15 years since Halo 1 came out, 12 since Halo 2 and 9 since 3 :/ then you feel old.
Now this comment is 6yrs old, how old do u feel now?
I got the most intense chills when I heard that sweeping Reach soundtrack... Ahhhh the memories, before Halo 4 killed my Halo enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, I loved Halo 4, but for some reason, it killed me.
All I have to say is... Forgeworld.
Is a laggy mess
sECUREij but still a masterpiece
Sinister a master piece! If you want to build in very specific locations. With a very small set of items. And maps that are grey, and strip away depth perception.
Well.. its certainly the 2nd best forge in the halo's, with halo 5 taking 1st
idk, I kind of like the feeling how they approached the story telling, and the fact that each mission, every enemy you kill is fruitless, when you all die, and the planet is glassed, is kind of unique.
greatest halo of all in my opinion
losiboy454 you couldn't be more right
Same
IDK halo 3 was pretty great... the memories of riding an elephant down the middle of sand trap was too fun.
Turner Warren I completely forgot about that, I miss the good old days of halo 😞
Turner Warren halo three is probably second best to me, followed by 2 and 1
I disagree with 90% of the things you said and was quite upset during the entire video, but to each is own. For me, the game wasn't too far from perfect :)
I feel the same exact way.
He calls the first level empty and bitches about it... Even though it makes sense that it would feel empty since it's the country side of Reach and people are trying to hide from aliens...
He calls odst lifeless and empty and complains about it... Even though a alien invasion just happened. Does he really expect pizza hut to be open?
He complains about noble team not being surprised when the covies land... Even though they actually do sound fairly surprised and act properly considering that they are a team of bad ass cyborg commandos who have been trained since birth to deal with extreme combat situations. Did he really expect them to freak out like a bunch of little girls?
He says fire fight doesn't fit in a game like halo Reach. A game mode that's about stopping waves of aliens from taking over in a game about stopping waves of aliens from taking over doesn't belong? That's retarded...
He complains that the games story doesn't to the book justice but why should it? The games came before the books so the games should make whatever story they want. Also... Have you read the book? 1/3rd of it is spartan kids training. Doesn't that sound boring? Fuck that lol. The story in the game is just fine.
He says invasion is his favorite mode yet his gamer tag says he barely even played invasion. What a two timing asshole this guy is lol. Says one thing and then does something else. Typical...
I feel this whole critique was tainted by a fierce love of halo 2. Notice how often he references the game and how positive his review of it was bias is unavoidable unfortunately.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
100% agree.
Agree
Impossibility??? Haha this is probably the best Halo game ever made, with the longest lasting Halo community on Xbox. The best way to finish of the Halo series.
lol, you kidding? Halo 3 lasted way longer than reach did and reach killed off the comp halo scene.
Jarek The Gaming Dragon No Halo 3 had died off by 2011. Reach lasted at least 5 years.
People still play Halo 3, and it peaked it managed to peak as the #1 more played game on Xbox Live 3 years after release, Reach couldn't even managed that 3 weeks after release.
At least 7k people still play reach
Tesla is right. I checked at midnight a few weeks back and Reach has thousands still playing. It said 6000 on a friday night. I also checked Halo 4 right afterward. It has 1000ish people. Then I checked halo 3... 250 lol. Clearly Calimbo over here is correct. Reach has a more loyal fanbase than halo 3 and has aged better than part 3. Reach... Like it or not... Has the longest living community. I even made a video about it to prove it lol.
And as for what Ryan Davies just said... He's right but I don't know what point he's trying to make... Judging a games quality based on it's popularity is fucking stupid. With his logic we might as well say cod games are better than reach and halo 3 lol. There are tons of good reasons why halo 3 was more played once upon a time than Reach was...
Halo 3 was the sequel to halo 2. The game that made online console shooters a thing. Halo Reach came right after ODST. A cash grab game that wasn't bad but it was a over priced expansion to halo 3 which was pretty gay. People were happy with halo 2 so of course they couldn't wait for halo 3. People were mixed about odst so of course they were hesitant about halo reach.
Halo 3 was also the big finale of the trilogy.
Halo 3 was one of the most hyped up games of all time. Reach was not.
Halo 3 features the main story with the main characters that people know about. MC... Cortana... Reach doesn't really feature those characters so a lot of people who play the halo games for the story didn't take as much interest.
Reach wasn't as popular with the competitive crowd as halo 2 and 3 were because the 1-50 rank system was gone.
Reach came out when the franchise was getting old. A lot of people were haloed out.
Reach had far more online games to compete with than halo 3 did.
In 2007 halo 3 had to compete with cod 4 and barely won in terms of popularity. In 2008 there was no new halo game and world at war came out. Halo 3 barely beat that game in popularity too. Then MW2 came out and eventually dominated Halo 3's popularity. That's when cod stole the spotlight from halo. Halo was no longer the most popular shooting game on the xbox. Then Reach came out at a time when halo was not as popular as it used to be. It makes sense that that it wasn't as popular... AT THE TIME!
Now Reach gets played way fucking more than halo 3. So according to you're logic halo 3 was better once but now it isn't. Retarded logic my friend...
The truth of the matter is that halo reach offers far more replay value than halo 3 does. There is more reason to come back and play Reach than there is with halo 3.
When you said "armour abilities actively remove tension from battles" that is incorrect. Don't you realise that the tension is filled up again once you realise the enemy players also have special abilities.
For example if you use active camo you have the advantage of being invisible and sneaking around which removes the tension of getting sniped or attacked from behind since you can hide. However you have the added tension of knowing that if you are spotted it's harder to escape from enemies who have sprint, and you can't get away easily if you are ganged up on. You see? Armour abilities add another layer to gameplay, the tension is not reduced because yes, you have abilities that can save you, but so does the enemy!
Good point. Or like how armor lock removes tension of getting hurt but once it wares off... Tension erupts as you are now in deep shit perhaps lol.
Or flying too high with jet pack only to splatter on the ground. AA adds risk and reward. And if you don't like AAs... Just play anniversary lol problem solved...
How does being immune to damage or invisible and not detectable on the motion tracker add tension.
Homecooked salami Immune to damage TEMPORARILY
@@bobbill3594 but still. It absolutely destroys the pacing of the game because you can shoot at them and the game freezes
@@psychomantis1926 would it not be the same for a bubble shield or health regen in Halo 3? Those don't annoy me
When Kat died in your arms it broke my heart because I loved the team so much, this was and will continue to be my favorite game it's so sad to see hardly anybody plays it anymore. Spartans never die there just missing in action.
Nickolas Reddig even though they really weren't characters
557deadpool I fucking hated kat tbh. her character really never developed at all and I found her to be more annoying than anything. her death was also pretty shit. a lone needle at the end of a firefight? meh.
5:13 thats because you're playing on easy, try legendary next time
I played on Heroic, and Legendary doesn't fix a boring opening.
Andrewx8 88 even on legendary it's too easy to kill anything that isn't an elite
Budokai Man u sure? I remember halo super difficult
Andrewx8 88 yeah i completed halo reach on legendary and its not that hard if you know what to do
Stayinposition It was pretty God damn hard
Have you ever played the story mode in legendary?
HugoElcabezas that's kinda what I was thinking play it on legendary and or with all the skulls on then tell me they're unchallenging idk how many times I died during my legendary run through I don't even remember if I finished and I was pretty damn good at the game
Legendary alone is a challenge, let alone with any skulls on.
Yeah, on the dam covenant ship, the elites, after knocking down their shield, they armor lock to come back up fully covered, theres just not enough ammo for me to complete it solo, get pissed and quit
theguyshadows did that in 5th or 6th grade...holy shit
with all skulls? its LITERALLY impossible. and ive done the legendary solo. i even have the achievement
I have played every Halo like a madman, and for me Reach had the best multiplayer. I would play it again in a heartbeat.
I'm suprised you didn't mention how reach issued in a new era in custom games along with its great forge.
Also I agree with most of your opinions on this game, but your opinion on the characters and story.
I'll admit the characters were generic but they weren't impossible to connect with. Now I might be deluded fanboy searching for something that doesn't exist but, I thought their generic archetypes helped them in the long run. Such as Jorge being the big but sensitive guy. We know he's a Spartan 2 and because of that he's seen some. Shite we wouldn't want to. For those who had just jumped into the series it would have sucked, but for those who knew a little bit or searched it up you could see a into it a bit more clearly. That being said I do wish they added a bit more context and in game banter I dunno. It sucks you were only a full team for 2 instances before everyone started dying 1 by 1. At the least there was something to these characters, more than I can say for halo 5
Yo these are really good btw I hope they get more attention in the future. They're about the closest you can get without nostalgia goggles. Reach is my favorite halo but the way you critique it really does hold weight.
Thanks! Glad to see someone who can still enjoy something while listening to a critique. For characters, while their archetypes are an easy thing to shake a stick at, that's not really the problem. Plenty of lovable characters are archetypes, it's how they're written and presented that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
Actually, now thinking about it, I' would've loved to see Halo 5's team coordination mechanics in Reach. They'd fit the whole "team" aspect of it if Bungie rewrote the story and the main character, obviously. Halo 5, btw, should've had them for Locke team, and had no team for MC at all, or maybe partner him with the Arbiter or something. Oh wait, my mind playing tricks on me. Halo 5 didn't even happen.
Halo 5's characters have a little bit of something, at least. Blue Team, not much, but Osiris does fairly well. (In fact, the only character to have an arc in the game is in Osiris). Frankly? I dare say Fireteam Osiris is one of 343's best additions to the franchise.
Locke is something atypical of characters in the universe; being ex-ONI AND a Spartan, it would be expected that he would be very egotistical, and look down upon other species and colonists. But throughout the game he is shown as being respectful and fair to the Meridian colonists and the Sangheili, even the Swords of Sanghelios' Unggoy. He even ends the game by risking his life to stop Cortana's guardian from taking the Master Chief. Locke's a career soldier; he wants to simply do his job and rely on a team. In Nightfall, his team betrays him, resulting in him being less trusting. This however, changes in Halo 5 when he is with a team he feels he can finally depend on.
Vale, I'm not entirely sure about her _character wise_ , but what she added to the campaign was nice, that connection with the Sangheili. She seems to have a very curious personality and a keen interest in the larger universe; for example, on Meridian as the guardian is rising, she points out that there are other guardians across the galaxy, and questions why this one in particular is the first one activated.
Tanaka, oddly enough, is the only one with a character arc. Early in the game she is reserved and, as the game describes, "rarely fraternizes". But slowly throughout the game she talks more and more about her experiences on a glassed planet, and the pay-off moment for her character is just before Sunaion, when she gave the speech. It is also fair to mention that she seems very caring; during the evacuation from Meridian, she not only asks, but _demands_ that Osiris not take any of the colonist's flying vehicles; she's willing to risk her and her team's life, and their mission, if it means a few more colonists reach safety.
Buck, well, he's Buck. We don't need an explanation for him. Though it is fair to mention that he and Locke have an interesting connection; being an ex-Squad leader(who doesn't want to lead anymore), he sympathizes with Locke's command position. In a way, Locke and Buck's relationship mirrors Locke's and Horrigan's in Nightfall; except Locke and Buck's relationship is way better than his with Horrigan, who was more manipulative and opportunistic than Buck.
Noice text.
cough reach still way better than any halo after it. and 343 screwed up halo
you're supposed to cough a second time
Balls Out For Bantu cough
inferno 343 didn't do that bad with 4
Its not really 343's fault, I cant even imagine being in their position right now. Trying to make a game as good as the original 3 Halo games, ODST, and Reach, when really they don't have the same people doing it, nor the experience to do it.
Bungie screwed up Halo with this garbage ass abomination.
Replayed Reach a couple of months ago. Was still great. Had a blast and even forgot about some parts so was somewhat new. Great game and co op!
While I definitely agree with some of your criticisms, this is still my favorite campaign in the series. I also adored the multiplayer (and spent more time with it in the long run than any other in the series). Also, Firefight in Reach is still my favorite "horde" mode in any game.
5:40 then play on heroic or legendary. I never play lower than heroic.
...But I did play on Heroic.
Raycevick then play legendary.
How does Legendary fix a boring opening?
Makes the enemys more of a threat like you said it was lacking.... they obviously arent a threat to many players on normal. They even say throughout many halos heroic is recommended.
Strong enemies aren't scary, they're just hard to kill. Difficulty has nothing to do with setting up atmosphere, tension, and suspense.
Woo so glad you finally made this! Thank you for not rushing and producing another quality video.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Always glad to see more content from you, even if I often don't agree with your opinions. The halo community really needs to step up to the bar you set, there's so few people doing analytical content and even fewer who do it at your level. I actually haven't watched your ODST video yet, so i'll have to do that after this. As always, I apologize for the length of my comment, feel free to respond to as much or as little of it as you want.
Regarding the comment about how the opening section of Winter Contingency with Emile and Kat investigating the device makes you feel like not a part of the team, I figured this was intentional. It's well established in ancillary and EU material that the team was very hurt by Thom's death and didn't want a replacement, and the game itself does hint at this in the opening cinematic with Carter's comment of "you are filling some boots a lot of us would rather leave unfilled", or something to that effect.
I do however agree with the general sentiment that throughout the game it feels more like you are an observer or a tag-along to NOBLE rather then a member. Again, for the first few missions, I think that feeling is fine, but as you said over time that should diminish, and it never does.
Your idea about reversing the settings for the first mission is brilliant, I'm amazed nobody has suggested that before.
Regarding armor abilities, my understanding is that people are mostly upset about the fact that it meant there were no longer even starts in multiplayer, which people see as a core part of the halo formula. There's also a large amount of people who have a vtriol towards anything even similar to CoD due to a perceived rivalry between the franchises and saw armor abilities as bungie "selling out" to their competitor. As far of your example of each armor ability being a crutch in some fashion to make up for some area where a player may lack in skill, i'm not sure I buy that. I mean, obviously the examples you present are valid, but it ignores the fact that by the same token they add opportunities where skillgaps are present in regards to clever usage of them, what ability is best used at that time, and in other ways. I don't think it's really possible to definitively say if they had a net postive or net negative effect on skillgap, especially since it's loadout based and that adds variables, wheras if they were like spartan abilities in 5, everybody has the same ones at all times and that acts as a "control" where you can more readily evaluate their impact.
On a tangent, I never saw the single player level design/pacing advantage as being the primary bonus to having health. Rather, I felt the interplay between bullet and plasma based weapons and their varying damage depending on what you were hitting at the time as the main one, with the "less skilled players will get punished more per encounter even if they live through one" and the map design arguments you present mainly being pros in MP, not SP
While I get what you are saying regarding the overuse of cannonfodder, from a lore perspective the ratio of enemy types makes sense as they have it. Having a ton of elites on the field in the same area would be totally inconsistent with the lore.
I also take GREAT issue with you calling the DMR the BR successor. It is not. The Needle rifle is far more similar to the BR's role in terms of effective range then the DMR is. You allude to this in the video, but Bungie said in interviews the DMR was intended to be more of a long range support weapon and less of an all purpose general gun like the BR. In combination with the fact the AR's accuracy was greatly increased with the inclusion of bloom allowing bursting to be very useful in accurate fire allowed it to hit targets at ranges formerly only the BR could hit in past games, I think it's clear that this was bungie trying to fix the balance issues past games have had where the precision gun ends up being the only non power weapon worth having at any given time, which defeates the point of the two weapon limit which bungie has said was intended to prevent you from having tools that were suited to any situation at once, and obvious the CE magnum, and Halo 2/3 BR break that logic.
Obviously, their attempt wasn't very successful, but at the very least it made the balance a little betterr in that the AR now has a much wider range of usability which gives it a less limited/useless role, not only due to the accuracy increase but due to the removal of the SMG which "frees up" space where it's the most viable gun to use.
Regarding the "NOBLE team don't feel like people" I felt their degree of indivual personality compared to their no-noness all business side was perfect from a lore perspective. As S3's, they would be less "brainwashed" then S2's, but still very regimented in completing the mission and being professional soliders. If anything I would say Jorge has TOO much personality, him being an S2.
As far as your overall criticisms about the plot and the lack of a tangible goal for noble team and lack of cohesion between cutscenes, I really don't have any comment. But I do think it's funny you point to the Halo ring being blown up or working alongside hunters or taking down scarabs as examples of good stuff when I recall you deriding those sort of "set pieces" in your videos for Halo 2 and Halo 3 (though I disagreed with you then). I do think that there's something about Reach that always feels a bit dull that I can't put my finger on in comparsion to the original trilogy, but I also feel that may have been intentional given the tone and visual design of the game and the lore events it deals with. It's SUPPOSED to be duller, bleaker, and not quite as exciting, no?
I absolutely agree that firefight in reach almost completely lacks the feeling of desperation that it had in ODST, but I also enjoyed it as it's own sort of arcadey take on the idea, personally. To each his own in that regard. I also agree reach by far has the worst maps in the series, though both for FF and for MP maps, reach's modularity alleviates it a bit, but i'll get to that later.
regarding invasion and your comment about it being a bit too video gamey and it could using more immersion, i'm a bit flabbergasted they never fused the generator defense FF mode into invasion where the generator was one stage of an invasion match.
I have zero sympathy for MLG's dislike of reach. They and the competitive halo scene were an obnoxious nuisance and only made the game and the community worse, and contrary to what you said in the video, bungie did cater to them, they made the weapon balance worse from the Halo 3 beta to the final game in accordance with competitive player's feedback. Thankfully, they seem to be much better now, but I digress.
At the end of the day, I feel reach's greatest strength is the sheer quantity and modularity of content it has to offer. Campaign, campaign matchmaking, firefight, firefight matchmaking, a host of settings to adjust for that, a full multiplayer suite, the second best forge in the franchise, etc. There's so, so many ways to play reach and while it may be behind it's predecessors in a few ways, all of that content is, at the very worst, still good. It's a great package and has to be one of the largest FPS games period in terms of content and modularity out of the box. Many of the game's issues in FF andf MP can just outright be fixed or lessened greatly by messing around with forge or the gametypes enough.
It's a shame that Halo 5 is so lacking in content by contrast when the core mechanics are so strong.
Glad to see you back, Jabber. As par for the course, I don't believe I'll be able to address every point.
Your first point is good, though I'd argue that getting the beacon for them would just allow that to be highlighted even more, it'd be interesting to see their reaction to someone they're not fond of help them out at the beginning regardless.
As for not having more Elites because of Lore, I doubt that was the intention behind it, and if it was, it ends up hurting what they were going for.
I say the DMR is a successor to the Battle Rifle because that's what the Executive Producer said in one of the Vidoc's.
When it came to lack of awesome moments, Halo 2's moment of working alongside Hunters, and Halo 3's scarab weren't set-pieces, they were unique alterations to gameplay. Typically when something is a set-piece, it's when an encounter is 100% prefixed and can only be completed one way. While it's good Reach doesn't have those, it also doesn't have any interesting moments where it messes with your expectations. Every level in Reach, despite their variety in visuals and locations, end up feeling the same because for 90% of them, they are.
Reach's wasn't so much determined by the game itself, but as you say, how modular it is and the community tools built around it. I think that's why this video may have rubbed some people the wrong way, and I why I do wish that I dived more into Forge World and the community features at the end. But, it's tool late now haha.
Thanks for the comment!
See ya next time.
Oh, I certainly don't think the lack of elites is due to them trying to be lore friendly (the game's timeline is actually inconsistent with the novels), but I was just saying i'd have been iffy on it due to that if there were more. It's part of what makes the Zealot squad feel special, too, it's not often you face a bunch of elites at once.
On the subject of set pieces vs. awesome moments, which would you consider the bit of PoA to be where the scarabs and drop pods are falling out of the sky around you while you are on the mongoose with emile? Because while I agree HR does lack a lot of cool moments or set pieces (which I enjoy, actually), that moment always stands out to me.
On a tangent, you should really link your channel in the descriptions, obviously you reply to comments a lot so all of us can find it that way, but a lot of people don't read comments.
Dude wtf, how sad must you be to write a fucking essay in the comment section?
You think that's bad, you should read some of I've seen by haters. Didn't know a RUclips critique of a video game could trigger some people to the point of insanity. I enjoy passionate comments when they're open-minded like the many between myself and Jabber; but ones by people that just hate my opinion make me laugh.
Its the great thing about the internet. Haters can be very entertaining :3
Halo reach 8 years later
PVZ Zone Halo Reach 9 years later ..
@Michael Bailey 'almost gonna look like H2 remastered cutscenes' not even close, they're upping the res and frame rate. It's getting the same treatment as Halo 3 did in the MCC. It'll still look great but that's definitely an exaggeration
@@foundhorrificgames.2505 halo reach 11 years later
Make your voice deeper and you would sound just like the Master Chief :P
More like Mashter Shief.
Go home.
i think hed sound more like snake with a lower voice
Chris Telemus kind of sounds like he's squeezing his nose to me
I like halo reach because it's campaign was everything i wanted for Halo but that's just my opinion
Same. Although it's not everything I wanted... I wanted to kick more ass and live at the end but hey... It's war... Sometimes you die... Most times you die lol.
Watching Halo Reach 6 years later... 6 years later.
Real
9:41 excuse me, but did you play the game on legendary?
Playing it on Legendary rn, and hes totally right, grunts and jackals are easy in this game when you have so much DMR and magnum ammo thrown at you.
Hell yeah! Been waiting for this!
I see that Saturn logo, respect
***** Thanks. Real underrated console.
+pffffft g33ked
I think you have the story completely backwards. It’s a true tragic story that is supposed to seem like everything you do is hopeless. The missions where you simply “do what you are ordered too” are like that because you’re a soldier in a chain of command. Halos identity is based around this human militaristic style that is shown throughout the whole series. Doing things completely out of line the whole time would be out of character for an ex oni elite soldier who’s had most of his file blacked out. The characters all have just enough time for you to become attached before they die if you are willing to be. You just seem too pessimistic about the the story in a way that kept you from enjoying what was given to you as a parting gift of a great company that made a few beloved games. My favorite part about the first three games are that you’re in a helplessly dire situation and you look at it and laugh like the marines and Johnson do. This game just took a slightly grittier side to it and I like it for the different perspective. Anyways idk if you’ll even read or care about this but it’s the longest comment I’ve ever written so sorry if it’s hard to follow
well yes but the characters are so one dimensional
13:08 when you said about the game was mainly trying to cripple the covenant which we know doesn't work. Well the way I see it, that's good story telling because it gives you a sense of hopelessness, that no matter how hard you try you always know in the back of your mind it will never quite be enough. It adds to the more human and desperate atmosphere and personally I think it worked well.
That's a popular response, but I'd argue it still doesn't work, because the player knows everything is going to fail, but the characters don't, and they're going to try anyway. This creates a permanent disconnect between the players and characters, which doesn't allow you to get immersed, and gives you less reasons to care.
Well, for me it made me feel more sorry for the characters, it's called 'pathetic fallacy' knowing something the character doesn't. And I think it was good as I knew their heroic acts would not work but and I created sympathy but we all have different opinions.
Batman Begins has more going on in it than just Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, that's why it works as a film. Also keep in mind that storytelling in games is very different than film.
Sound reasoning
I *adore* Halo: Reach. It's the main reason I bought both an Xbox 360 *and* an HD TV. I love the campaign. I agree with your idea of flipping the 1st mission back-to-front. I think that could have worked well. Changing the location of the beacon would have been nice, too.
Personally, I found the deaths of each Spartan quite moving with the exception of Kat who probably should have been switched with Jun. Making the only senseless death also be the only female spartan was problematic for me. Both Carter and Emile's deaths still give me chills.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about the datapads that reveal that the AIs are secretly influencing human society. While not as numerous as those in ODST, they certainly fleshed out the world.
Two types of Reach critics, those that sucked, n those that didnt, typically the ones that sucked at Reach didnt have many good things to say about it
Yup, those MLG Pros sure did love Halo: Reach, right?
Reach doesn't follow cannon. PERIOD
I liked the game, yet it was far more difficult, ridiculous at times as elites were able to armor lock and come back up with full shields, making kills near impossible, for those of us trying to solo legendary.
Armor lock was bad, but in solo legendary campaign when an enemy armor locked it was an opportunity to re-gain my composure to continue the fight, it didn't feel impossible. Biggest problem, as with any game on the hardest difficulty, was finding ammo.
MrScrewedx
Right, I remain trapped on the bridge, the elites are impossible to eliminate to make it back to the hanger, I have exhausted all ammo in the waves of the enemy in that one damn room between the bridge and hanger. Overcharged plasma pistol to remove armor, SOB armor locks and comes back up, they are bullet sponges when not needed to be.
That is easily the hardest part of the campaign, but I appreciated the challenge. I resorted to assassinations as much as possible and made it through. It was good fun.
it shows Carter getting wounded when then banshees shoot into the pelican. Although technically right, the narration at the end is Cortana. The story being made as you put it "badasses that can't change anything" was made this way so if a person whos first halo game can feel the helplessness of knowing you can't save your own planet. the scene where the covenant ships come out of slip space right after you lost an ally and an entire ship to take one out. Ive played all the halos but still found this one great despite knowing how it will end.
So true. Also... We didn't know EXACTLY how it would end. We didn't know that Halsey and Jun would survive. Also that whole...
"Badasses that can't change anything" Idea is retarded.
For 1... They did change something. They proved how hard humanities spartans are to fight towards the covies. They fear spartans for a reason lol. Noble team fucked a lot of them up really badly. They are not going to forget how hard taking Reach was. They didn't take Reach like candy from a baby. NO! They lost tons of capital ships lol. Sucks to be those nerds...
They also helped MC and Cortana survive which set in motion mankinds turning point for the war against the covies. Without noble team Halo 1-5 wouldn't even be a thing since the Autumn would have just been shit on lol.
I know Halo reach has some mistakes, but Jesus, cut Halo reach some slack. What did reach do to you?
Sadly he was overly critical and just plain stupid in a lot of areas. I did a video complimenting his good points and bashing his shitty points. You should check it out : )
Game Raters. He was a veteran halo 1-3 fanboy and thought he could just destroy reach but ended up sucking at reach
Game Raters. yeah reach is awesome . power to the people beotch
Reach is my favorite halo and I hate when people say bad things about Reach
Reach is a not a joke
Your perspective on Reach's firefight mode is interesting. Personally, firefight is one of the things that kept me coming back to Reach even after Halo 4 came out. I'm trying to image a new gametype that's sort of like firefight in reverse. Instead of the covenant coming to kill you and you having to defend against them. Maybe, it's the Covenant guarding a base or some objective that are unaware of your presence upon the start of a match, thus allowing you to either stealthily sneak your way into a base and pick the covenant forces off one by one, or you could charge in guns blazing. You could customize what enemies appear at what points in the match. You could forge on these maps, allowing you to tweak spawn points, scenery, vehicles, and even the bases themselves.
I enjoyed your other videos... but I kind of feel like you have a personal dislike of Reach that you're projecting into your examination of the game. If someone went into Reach for the first time after watching this, they'd be expecting a HUGE letdown, probably because you're so easily trashing the game and tearing it to pieces. I honestly feel like this is a Cinemasins video with how nitpick-y it,s getting.
Jeremy Puflett there is no "true" in these videos.
***** Except that most of the stuff he said in the video was how he viewed the game, and that is different for everybody.
You're right. He praised halo 2's multiplayer glitches and exploits and said something on the line that H3 balance and refinement (less exploits) made the multiplayer not as fun as H2. I get it, it's subjective. But when someone says an exploit makes a game better, I question their reasoning. Not hating, but questioning. Also if you watched his H2 video, his nostalgia glasses is very noticeable, and I don't blame him. It's hard not to.
Also, what he pointed out about Reach's firefight mode...
What's that? Spartans defending from hordes of Covenant troops isn't very realistic? It doesn't fit the narrative? Well, news flash, it fits the narrative a lot better than two teams of unicolored Spartans killing each other over and over and over again... over a skull on the ground. It's just way TOO nitpick-y. He slammed the best firefight experience in the franchise because apparently Spartans on the DEFENSE is unrealistic. Well, guess what the entire game's story is about...?
557deadpool wow. you're dense if that's all you got from this comment.
Halo reach 6 years later: 6 years later
I know I'm preaching to the choir here (since everyone has already said it) but I feel this guy really missed the point of Reach on multiple levels.
Yeah same, love his reviews normally but he almost entirety ignored the point of reach!
The first three games were basically superhero movies. You save the world and get the girl. I liked that Reach was different - your gratification doesn't come from a nice tidy ending, but from knowing you went down swinging and made them pay for it.